The Teacher

Secrets emerge from the outset of The Teacher. In the Prologue, a woman, later identified as Addie, hurriedly digs a grave. She is rushing as she worries about someone catching her in the act. It’s evident that this grave is for nefarious purposes and hints at a secret that Addie is desperate to conceal. The novel unfolds further with the introduction of Eve. She describes the way people perceive her and her husband, Nate, to be the perfect couple, only to reveal that her marriage is devoid of passion and bogged down in routine. Eve fantasizes about a truck hitting the car she and her husband are riding in and killing them both. Then the scandal that took place the previous year between Addie and Mr. Tuttle is revealed, suggesting more secrets as the author slowly introduces the facts about the scandal in a way that allows the possibility of something more scandalous than a teacher helping a traumatized student.

Eve’s fascination with shoes causes her to purchase shoes without her husband’s knowledge because she knows he worries about the amount of money she spends on them. It is later revealed that Eve not only buys shoes and lies to Nate about them but also owns more shoes than he is aware of and hides them in a suitcase in their closet. This secret is revealed to be an open one, as Nate will eventually admit to knowing about the suitcase, but it causes tension in the marriage. It also becomes an issue that Nate uses against Eve when they disagree, most notably when she reveals that she knows about his secret relationship with Addie.

Secrets have destroyed more than one relationship for Addie. Beyond the scandal with Mr. Tuttle, Addie lost her best friend, Hudson Jankowski. Hudson was Addie’s best friend since elementary school, but they stopped being friends on the day Addie’s father died because Addie forced Hudson to keep a dark secret: the fact that she pushed her father to his death. Hudson struggled with this secret, and it caused him to end their friendship because he couldn’t look at Addie without seeing the body of her father at the bottom of the stairs. It was the death of her father and the loss of Hudson that drove Addie to seek out Mr. Tuttle’s kindness, and that led to the scandal that destroyed Mr. Tuttle’s career and Addie’s reputation.

Nate’s relationship with Addie is tantalizing to her because of its secrecy. Nate begins manipulating Addie by praising a poem she wrote in his English class and then inviting her to join the school’s poetry magazine, Reflections. Nate continues the praise and flattery, drawing Addie in until he is able to seduce her. Immediately, Nate insists that Addie keep the nature of their relationship to herself and refuses to acknowledge her during class for fear that someone will figure out the nature of their relationship. These secrets weigh heavily on Addie as she struggles to keep the joy she feels in this relationship contained while also struggling with elements of the relationship that make her uncomfortable. Addie finds out later that Kenzie has the same secret and that Nate has used her as he used Kenzie. Addie and Kenzie then find strength in revealing their secret to the police.

Secrets negatively impact every character and their relationships within the novel. Addie is ostracized by her classmates because the nature of her relationship with Mr. Tuttle has become distorted in rumor. Her friendship with Hudson ended because she forced him to keep the secret of the truth of her father’s death. Eve and Nate keep so many secrets from one another that it turns their marriage into a homicidal tug of war. The revelation of these secrets has a profound impact on each relationship, either repairing the relationship or tearing it apart once and for all.