66 pages • 2 hours read
Twenty Years Later
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Reputation, Truth, and the Search for Justice
One of the fundamental themes across Twenty Years Later is the conflict between personal ambition, the pursuit of truth, and the search for justice. Each goal has a different path, and these paths rarely intersect. Maggie Greenwald, for example, sacrifices truth and justice to pursue reputation, obscuring evidence to falsely convict innocent people and advance herself as a prosecutor. For Avery, truth is a means to establish her professional reputation, though she makes it clear that only some kinds of truth will serve her purpose, noting how the Victoria Ford special will bring in a large audience. Even Victoria’s crime could be seen as a way for her to restore justice, as she gets revenge after being scorned by her lover, Cameron Young.
Early in the novel, Emma Kind characterizes the media as “rabid animals,” and Avery hardly falls short of that characterization. She frequently notes how “her viewing audience would salivate over every detail” of her special on Victoria Ford (247), and it’s evident that she views the pursuit of truth as a means to an end. The novel frames journalism as a balance between truth and personal ambition, as journalists’ objective is ultimately to engage the audience. Though Avery believes Victoria is innocent, she does not view her investigation as a way to bring justice to someone unjustly accused. Indeed, she notes that American Events cannot speculate on “who might have planted the evidence” in the Cameron Young case (345), as it would be a legal “liability.” Avery’s decision to sacrifice personal ambition in favor of justice at the end of the novel thus illustrates her character growth. She chooses to omit the bombshell that Victoria is still alive, even though telling the truth, in this case, would be advantageous to her career. In deciding to protect an “innocent” woman, she acts according to her own ethics, navigating moral gray areas to do what she ultimately feels is just.
For law enforcement, on the other hand, the balance is between reputation and justice, even if it means sacrificing the truth. For Maggie Greenwald, neither truth nor justice matters, but Walt shows how concerns about one’s reputation can subvert the pursuit of justice even unintentionally. As he rewatches the video of Victoria and Cameron in the present day, “removed from his role as lead detective” and “without the enormous pressures he felt at the time to find answers” in 2001 (252), it becomes obvious to him that the video was recorded secretly, whereas previously he saw it only as evidence of Victoria’s guilt. As lead detective, Walt was pressured by Maggie to go after Victoria, but he was also influenced by his ambition to advance his career. He acknowledges that pressing the case against Victoria likely led to his role in the FBI, showing how finding a credible scapegoat can be more beneficial to one’s career than uncovering the truth.
Victoria’s plan hinged on her mistaken assumption that law enforcement would prioritize truth and justice above all else. She could not have predicted Maggie Greenwald’s ambition, or Walt’s, which led her to be correctly pursued as a murderer, though for the wrong reasons. Avery’s final special obscures the truth while meaning to expose it.
The Lasting Impact of Trauma
For both Walt and Avery, the main internal conflict in their character development is the struggle to overcome the lasting effects of the traumas they have experienced. Avery is working to overcome the damage done to her ability to trust other people and let them into her life after Garth betrayed her and her family, while Walt is struggling to move past Meghan’s betrayal. The effects of those traumas influence the way the narrative unfolds as the characters grapple with their urges to push others away and withdraw within themselves.
Reflecting on New York, Avery thinks: “So many bad things had happened in this city. So many things [she] wanted to forget” (132), noting how Garth’s fraud “forced” her to take a new identity. However, Avery cannot “stop herself from loving the son of a bitch” (138), because she still feels a fundamental attachment to him as her father. Because she associates loving someone with being hurt by them, Avery avoids close relationships with others, which then becomes an impediment to her relationship with Walt, especially when he violates her hard-won trust.
Walt, like Avery, was betrayed and deceived by someone he loved, Meghan Cobb, who unbeknownst to him was his partner’s wife. The scar resulting from Walt being shot in the incident that killed his partner becomes a symbol of the trauma he has endured. The scar itches when Walt is triggered, which occurs not in situations that remind him of the shooting, but, instead, when Walt thinks about New York City and Meghan. Considering his role with the FBI, Walt wonders “how his relationship with Avery could end in anything other than disaster” precisely because he knows he is deceiving Avery in the same way that Meghan deceived him (256).
In the end, Avery and Walt’s relationship helps them to overcome their traumas together and learn to trust again, but the lasting effects of trauma are likely the reasons behind Walt’s hesitance to move back to the United States and Avery’s desire to continue living as Avery Mason, rather than as Claire Montgomery. While past trauma remains a fact of their lives, by confronting their traumas, both Walt and Avery can move on to healthier and happier ways of living, as is seen in Avery’s decision to reclaim the narrative—and her own identity—by publishing a special on her father and herself.
Perceptions and Judgments of Sexuality
Throughout the novel, characters’ perceptions and preconceptions of sexuality and sexual play, namely bondage, color their judgment. Sexual play is a performative sexual act that involves shifting dynamics in power, role, or form or intercourse. Walt’s understanding of bondage play as inherently “deviant” and violent leads him to assume Victoria is guilty, as he and other investigators are disturbed by the video recording Victoria and Cameron’s sex acts. When Avery sees the video, though, she has a different interpretation. She does not see Victoria and Cameron’s bondage play as the violent and aggressive act that Walt initially assumed it to be, but as “playful punishment.”
The most apparent judgment of sexuality comes from Walt’s coworker, Ken, who, upon seeing the video of Victoria and Cameron having sex, tells Walt: “If you haven’t enjoyed it thus far, I’m pretty sure you won’t like the rest of it” (116), implying that the video gets more violent after Victoria’s initial use of the whip on Cameron. However, as Walt and Avery discover later, the remainder of the video is Victoria crouching to let Cameron out of his restraints and “rubbing his back” (250). Ken’s exaggeration about the video’s violence is influenced by his negative opinion of bondage play, which he views as a “deviant” sexual act. His opinion is evidenced, as well, by his “sideways glance” toward Walt when Walt identifies the board that Cameron is tied to in the video. Because Ken perceives sexuality as a singular concept, he considers all sex acts outside his own “deviant” and even criminal. His judgment of Victoria as a violent perpetrator is founded on this understanding.
Interestingly, whether the novel supports or rejects this kind of judgment is unclear, as Victoria does indeed exhibit violent tendencies. When she murders Cameron, the narrative notes: “The normal lightheartedness of their role-playing was gone tonight, and Victoria saw the deep purple welts wrapping around his thigh and shoulders” (355). Furthermore, the narrative adds, she “had been particularly violent with the whip, but he hadn’t protested” (355), which suggests that bondage play has the potential to become dangerous. Such an acknowledgment is reasonable, but by directly connecting bondage play to Cameron’s murder, the novel seems to agree, at least in part, with Ken’s assessment that bondage inevitably escalates into serious violence, which is, itself, a judgment founded in a negative perception of certain sex acts and sexual play.
Unlock all 66 pages of this Study Guide
Plus, gain access to 9,150+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Charlie Donlea
