The Sun Down Motel

For Carly, the photograph of Vivian is a symbol of family secrets. This is the photograph that Carly comes across in her mother’s drawer, and she uses it to speculate about who her aunt was and what was happening around the time of her disappearance.

The photo also symbolizes the way the media depicts missing and murdered women. When Viv sees it for the first time, she imagines a newspaper using it in an article about her and thinks about how someone seeing the photo would perceive her. This is in fact the photo the paper uses when Viv disappears, highlighting how the media and society broadly flatten women’s personalities and lives into two-dimensional cautionary or sensationalist figures.

Viv cuts her hair short when she arrives in Fell. The act symbolizes her reinvention of herself and her independence from her family; her mother disapproves of women with short hair. The cut therefore also reflects Viv’s refusal to cater to misogyny—specifically, societal ideas about “good” and “bad” women.

The barn is a symbol that reinforces the theme of secrets hidden in plain sight. The barn is a convenient abandoned location for Viv, Marnie, and Alma to place Simon, even if it ends up being temporary.