Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Knock-Knocknaree. Who's There?Knocknaree is a small town "only a few miles from Dublin" (Prologue.2)—Dublin, Ireland, that is—and it has farmers, cows, pastures, and children getting murdered i...
Genre
Whodunnit?In the Woods has all the hallmarks of a mystery novel—a murder, a disappearance, an assortment of oddball suspects, police procedural straight out of cable television, and detectives wh...
What's Up With the Title?
There are "woods" on two different levels in In the Woods. On the physical level, you can't miss them. The woods around Knocknaree are where Rob's friends disappeared in the eighties and where youn...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
"Probably just somebody's nasty black poodle. But I've always wondered… What if it really was Him, and He decided I wasn't worth it?"—Tony Kushner, A Bright Room Called Day This is a quote from...
What's Up With the Ending?
Rob is so comically bad at his job, we'd classify In the Woods as a comedy if it weren't so darn tragic. Rob loses everything in the end: his job, his partner, his friend (they're the same person),...
Tough-o-Meter
In the Woods is a fairly long book (over four hundred pages), and it deals with some disturbing subject matter—murder, rape, kids disappearing, parents naming their children after Britney Spears...