Heart-Shaped Box

“Jude hadn’t been able to repeat the act himself, not even onstage, for show, when he could afford all the guitars he wanted. He was, however, perfectly willing to use one to defend himself. In a sense he supposed he had always used them as weapons.”

Here, Jude contemplates using a guitar to bludgeon an intruder. The final sentence reinforces music as having always been a “weapon” for him—a way to distance himself from his abusive father and former girlfriends.

“His own farther had treated the family dogs better than he ever treated Jude, or Jude’s mother. In time it had rubbed off on Jude, and he’d learned to treat dogs better than himself as well.”

This quote reveals Jude’s internalized loathing due to his father’s abuse. It also increases pathos for his two dogs, Angus and Bon, who eventually die due to an equally abusive father figure’s machinations.

“Danny’s attraction to Jude was so different from Georgia’s, or Florida’s, or any of the other girls’. Jude collected them in almost the exact same way the Pied Piper collected rats, and children. He made melodies out of hate and perversion and pain, and they came to him, skipping to the music, hoping he would let them sing along.”

Jude’s characterization of his music as made of “hate and perversion and pain” ties it to his self-loathing: It’s both an embodiment of loathing and a means of coping with it. Jude assumes that anyone who wants to be near him must share his negative attitude, but this assumption is ultimately complicated by the selfless Georgia (Marybeth).

“People wondered why something like Columbine could happen. Jude wondered why it didn’t happen more often.”

Jude identifies mental health as a factor in shootings. This observation reflects the current state of mass shootings in America (school related or otherwise), as the link between mental health and toxic masculinity remains contentious.

“Around that time Anna had come to live with him. Not that he ever called her by that name. She was Florida then, although somehow, since he’d learned of her suicide, he’d come to think of her as Anna again.”

This is the first time Jude stops calling one of his girlfriends by a stately nickname. The decision raises questions as to whether or not he blames himself for her death; either way, it reinforces his struggle to see women as people.

“Craddock McDermott moved in stop motion, a series of life-size still photographs.”

Joe Hill often uses cinematic language. For example, this quote references a specific filmmaking technique (slow motion) to conjure an unnatural, vivid image of Craddock’s movement.

“If you want me to go, you just have to listen to my voice. You have to listen hard. You have to be like a radio, and my voice is the broadcast.”

Craddock’s demand that his victims act as radios that broadcast his requests provides an interesting twist on the Victorian Gothic obsession with haunted technology. The framing of humans as technology reinforces the ghost as an inescapable threat.

“It disoriented Jude, the way the dead man’s voice came at him out of the silence, words that had an almost physical presence, bees whirring and chasing one another around inside of his head. His head was the hive that they flew into and out of, and without them there was a waxy, honeycombed emptiness.”

Craddock’s haunting, his invasion of Jude’s head, is framed as dehumanizing. Jude is rendered not only inhuman but also inanimate by the ghost; he becomes a receptacle, while the ghost’s words become animated.

“Get to the dogs. His life—and Georgia’s—depended on it. It was an idea that made no rational sense, but Jude did not care what was rational. Only what was true.”

The horror genre often explores why people make irrational choices. This quote shows why Jude is primed to thrive in this genre: He is quick to accept the irrational and cling to what is “true.” The dichotomy between “rationality” and “truth” suggests that the truth may not always comport with logic.

“The atmosphere itself was different, the air denser, warmer, sticky with dampness. Like an armpit.”

This description of humidity is representative of Hill’s prose. He’s unafraid of incorporating irreverent description, such as the simile of an armpit. The simile not only conjures a specific texture but also gives the atmosphere a physical texture.

“Past lays. Goddammit. Is that the way you think of me? The present lay, soon to be the past lay?”

As Georgia (Marybeth) better understands her relationship with Jude, she remains unafraid to articulate her dismay. This openness models a vulnerability that he eventually learns to exhibit.

“‘You’ve told my fortune three times at least, and it comes out a different way every time.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But they’re all true anyway.’”

In this quote, Anna reads Jude’s palm. The idea of multiple futures—all of which are “true”—suggests that no matter what happens with Craddock, he retains self-determination. The novel’s attitude toward self-determination matters because it underscores Jude’s final choice to become a more caring partner to Marybeth.

“What scares me is the idea of having kids and then them finding out the truth about me. Kids always find out. I found out about my folks.”

Jude’s hesitance to father children speaks to the cyclical nature of trauma and his overall difficulty with romantic relationships. He is afraid of traumatizing his potential children the way his parents traumatized him.

“What he’d thought of as a personal strength—he was happy to know about her only what she wanted him to know—was something more like selfishness. A childish willingness to remain in the dark, to avoid distressing conversations, upsetting truths. He had feared her secrets—or specifically, the emotional entanglements that might come with knowing them.”

Here, Jude gains some awareness of his selfishness. His resistance to being close to girlfriends—his need to use objectifying nicknames like “Georgia” and “Florida”—was born of a fear of commitment.

“Death isn’t the end. I know that now. We both do.”

Here, Marybeth acknowledges something that Jude has yet to voice: Because they now know that consciousness doesn’t end with death, death is no longer as terrifying as it was before. Marybeth’s acceptance of death foreshadows her willingness to act as Anna’s “door” at the end of the novel.

“Jude felt disconnected from who he’d been before he first saw the dead man. His career, his living, both the business and the art that had preoccupied him for more than thirty years, seemed matters of no importance.”

This quote demonstrates some of Jude’s character growth. He acknowledges that Craddock’s presence has fundamentally altered his relationship with not only Marybeth but also himself. His priorities have shifted, and so has his identity.

“I called her name. I called her name, but I couldn’t change what happened.”

Here, Jude tries to save Ruth’s ghost by calling her name. Despite Ruth’s abduction and death being in the past, he is desperate to “fix” something in order to cope with his present.

“I never thought for a moment anyone could change what happened to her. That’s done. The past is gone.”

Here, Bammy voices one of the novel’s insights about the nature of the past. The past is done, even if it continues to affect Jude and Marybeth’s present: Both must face their respective traumas, rather than continue burying them.

“Only, if he had the gun with him, Craddock would’ve persuaded him to shoot Georgia and himself by now, and the dogs, too, and Jude thought about guns he’d owned, and dogs he’d owned, and running barefoot with the dogs in the hillocky acres behind his father’s farm, the thrill of running with the dogs in the dawn light, and the clap of his father’s shotgun as he’d fired at ducks.”

This quote’s lengthy syntax reveals Jude’s shifting interiority. As he becomes more desperate and contemplates breaking into Jessica’s house, sentences bleed into each other, reflecting his jumble of thoughts.

“As Bon’s spirit dropped toward the floor, she passed through a beam of intense, early-morning sunshine and winked out of being.”

Here, Hill juxtaposes a scene of intense violence (Bon’s murder) with a moment of beauty (Bon’s passing). This juxtaposition foreshadows the wonder that Jude finds in death while underscoring the horror that leads to it.

“It would’ve been easier to look upon him, as he was now, if he were dead. Jude had hated him for so long that he was unprepared for any other emotion. For pity. For horror. Horror was rooted in sympathy, after all, in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst.”

Hill uses Jude’s reflection on his dying father to reflect on the horror genre. He sees horror as “rooted in sympathy,” a way for readers to identify with characters, no matter how unlikeable or untrustworthy they may be.

“‘Wherever did that boy go? The one who smiled on the elephant ride?’

‘He starved to death. I’m his ghost.’”

Jude’s characterization of his childhood as leaving him as a ghost reflects his trauma and creates a separation between Jude Coyne and Justin Cowzynski. Even though Jude is, in many ways, defined by his past, he also sees himself as different from the Justin who feared his father.

“All the world is made of music. We are all strings on a lyre. We resonate.

We sing together. This was nice. With that wind on my face. When you sing, I’m singin’ with you, honey.”

In Anna’s final conversation with Jude, she uses musical metaphors to illustrate the interconnectivity of life. This subverts his earlier framing of music as a “weapon” to keep people away. To Anna, music can be a form of connection, and it is only through connection that Jude overcomes his ordeal.