These Silent Woods

“I’ve kept track of the days and I am grateful for each one because if there is one thing I have learned in this life, it’s that it can all end, fast. I know, too, that it will.”

An undercurrent of anxiety runs through Cooper’s parenting of his daughter, Finch. His attachment exceeds the general appreciation of parents for the experience of raising young children; he literally counts the days that Finch has been alive. While the knowledge that time moves on and everything ends is a truism, Cooper’s paranoia sharpens the observation. That he “know[s]” that his idyll with Finch will end suggests a more specific cause in his past.

“Thing is, once you’ve crossed, once you’ve done almost everything you ever said you wouldn’t do, you also lose your sense of assurance that you won’t do those things again.”

Cooper’s PTSD places him at odds with himself. Although he is conscientious and observant, he worries that he is not fully in control of himself or his reactions. So, when he first meets Scotland—and notes that Scotland is carrying an assault rifle—Cooper’s mind threatens to run away with him, imagining a time when he could end up crossing a line again.

“Scotland peels off the layers of fabric: a blue sweatshirt, a pink shirt, a purple scarf. Good Lord: girls’ clothes. Now, why would he have those things?”

Cooper notes that Scotland uses “girls’ clothes” to wrap a gift for Finch but is unable to understand why. Scotland does not volunteer an explanation nor, significantly, does Cooper ask for one. Rather, he becomes suspicious of his neighbor, not only because of this gift but because of Scotland’s relationship with Finch more broadly. Only late in the novel does Cooper discover the explanation for these clothes: They had belonged to Scotland’s daughter who died with her mother in a car accident while Scotland himself was at the wheel.

“Thing is, though: you will always know what you did and what you took and what you lost and it’s your life, it’s all part of you, like it or not, and you can never truly separate yourself from it. I signed up for it, I followed through. I accept responsibility. My point is just that you can never really be free from the things you’ve done, and that’s that.”

Cooper considers his culpability for his actions. Although he frequently feels himself to be out of control because of his PTSD and believes that he is “forced” to take potentially violent or illegal actions to extricate himself from impossible situations, he also holds himself to a high standard when it comes to taking responsibility. As much as he wants to run from his past, he knows that the attempt will ultimately be futile.

“The moment I step into the store, I feel a swell of panic coming, grasping at me like a drowning swimmer with a rescuer within reach. Which, you know what happens. The person pulls you under. Down, down, down.”

The moment that Cooper steps inside the Walmart to buy winter supplies, he begins to have a panic attack. He externalizes the panic itself, comparing it to a “drowning swimmer” about to pull a potential rescuer down with him. Cooper is the rescuer rather than the swimmer in this image, which suggests a continuing reluctance to see himself as someone who needs help; he is more comfortable helping others, even at his own expense. the panic takes on a life of its own and is strong enough to pull him down whatever his intentions.

“As we organize all the stuff and set everything in its right spot, such a sense of satisfaction comes over me that I start to whistle […]. There’s a lightness to our work because despite the hiccups along the way—the chatty lady at Walmart, the snooping old man at the truck, Sheila and the sheriff at the gas station—we made it. We’re safe.”

The act of organizing objects, putting everything in “its right spot” restores to Cooper the sense of order and safety so crucial to his well-being. Seen in retrospect, the interactions that had seemed so threatening at the time subside into mere “hiccups,” rather than catastrophes.

“That’s the nice thing about books. You can experience all different people and all sorts of places through them. All in the safety and comfort of your own home.”

Cooper finds the books in the cabin a reasonable substitute for human interaction that allows him to remain safely at home. However, even as he claims to Finch that books can substitute for places and people, he senses a certain hollowness to the cliché. Part of his emotional journey through the course of the novel will involve coming to terms with the fact that Finch needs more than books to thrive.

“You will see that in all of the animal kingdom, creatures protect their young in the most senseless ways. They will throw themselves in harm’s way. They will fight, wing and claw and tooth. […] What I mean to say here is that it isn’t unnatural for a person to do everything in his power to protect his young. It isn’t wrong.”

Cooper justifies his kidnapping of his instant daughter as an act of primal instinct, allowing no room for reconsideration or hesitation. By focusing on what is natural, rather than what is right, Cooper situates his actions beyond the realm of human morality and the legal system: He is just doing what any living thing would do. While this is clearly an oversimplification of the situation, it is central to the way that Cooper understands himself as a father.

“An unsettling realization: that Finch could keep something from me. Withhold information. That she could have secrets of her own.”

Cooper’s sudden insight into the complexity of Finch’s mind unsettles him and, in many ways, begins the process of unraveling their life together. As much as he tries to gather all the information he can to keep them safe, Finch has the ability to evade his protection, carrying out her own activities as an independent entity. In other contexts, this quality would be laudable; certainly, Cooper wants his daughter to be a capable person in the world. Under the conditions of their life together, however, her maturity can only be seen as dangerous.

“Terrifying, the thought that I could pass any of it on. That Finch could suffer from these very same things, and it would be entirely my fault. Genetics, proximity, influence.”

Cooper needs to believe that he can protect his daughter from the outside world, but he worries that he will not be able to protect her from himself—specifically, from the panic attacks and fears that are a result of his PTSD. Even though his mental condition is largely the result of an experience that she is unlikely to have—being a soldier in Afghanistan—he worries that she will pick up some of those qualities simply from being around him.

“Somehow I can’t shake the feeling that us crossing paths with that girl—it’s trouble.”

“That girl” is Casey, whose disappearance and death will soon make Cooper and Finch’s detachment from the rest of the world untenable. Once again, an external force, this time in the figure of a young stranger in the woods, sends Cooper into protection mode.

“It’s that Finch is already falling head over heels for her, attaching like a limpet. Marie reading, Finch nestled against her, the warm soapy water and the tea and the chocolates—it’s too painful, it’s too much, these glimpses of a life we will never have, when all this time, I’d convinced myself that what we had was enough.”

Describing Finch as a “limpet” conveys the depth of Finch’s desire for human connection. A limpet is a mollusk that clings tightly to rocks, and Cooper sees Finch attaching this way to Marie. The metaphor taken from the natural world registers, even if Cooper has not yet acknowledged it, the unnaturalness of so much of Finch’s early life. In eight years, Finch has only ever interacted with three other humans—Cooper, Scotland, and Jake—and they are all men. The image of Finch with a mother figure also provokes unsettling feelings in Cooper, reminding him of the very different life he had wanted to live with Cindy, Finch’s mother.

“It’s a source of stress, knowing that gate’s open. Cars won’t get through in this snow, or trucks. But snowmobiles. Unlikely they’d be out this far but you never know. And now I need to keep an eye out.”

The open gate to the property broadcasts a signal to the wider world that the property is inhabited. Despite the unlikeliness of anyone using the gate to access the cabin, for Cooper it is just another sign of his and Finch’s vulnerability. He resolves to redouble his vigilance, but it is not even clear what he fears.

“‘Do you know the story of Daphne and Apollo?’ Finch asks.”

Cooper overhears Finch talking about the story of Daphne and Apollo with Marie. In the Greek myth, Apollo falls deeply in love with Daphne, a wood nymph who wants only to remain in the wilderness despite Apollo’s attempts to court her; her father, out of love for her, turns her into a tree just before the god captures her. Finch has given the name Daphne to Casey, whom she has only observed from a distance, but nevertheless considers a friend. However, the myth of a wood nymph with an intensely protective father has clear parallels to Finch’s own situation that are reinforced when Cooper asks her to stop “obsessing” about the girl.

“I double back, replay the moment, doubt myself. It had been there, hadn’t it? Something blooming between the two of us. A closeness. A possibility. And what had I done? Pulled away.”

Cooper’s awkwardness with women goes back to his high school days; it returns to him now that Marie is in the cabin. His mind is unable to keep pace with the sensations in his body and his emotional reactions, so he falls back on the old habit of pulling away: the habit that has, of course, structured most of his adult life.

“[Marie] turns and when our eyes meet, I have a sudden feeling that I’m walking on the surface of a wide river, in winter. Iced over, at least by the looks of things, but maybe not thick enough to hold your weight.”

The sensation of walking on a frozen river that may not be frozen enough succinctly captures the feeling of precariousness and possibility that Cooper feels in Marie’s presence. His habits of caution—and his long isolation from other people—make it difficult for him to trust the appearance of solid ground, as it were. Marie, first glimpsed with her back to Cooper, appears unreadable and quiet, only tersely acknowledging his presence.

“This book. Tuck Everlasting. It’s a kids’ book. My daughter read it last year.”

The book that the sheriff finds in the cabin—Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt—has a number of parallels to Finch’s life. In the novel, a family finds a spring with water that allows them to stay young forever. The 17-year-old boy, Tuck, is actually over 100 years old, and he leaves water for 10-year-old Winnie to drink when she turns 17 so they can stay young forever. However, she instead uses the water to save a toad, and grows old and dies. Similarly, Cooper attempts to keep Finch in the cabin and restrict her ability to live and, in essence, “stay young” and separate from the greater world. However, throughout the novel he realizes the danger and futility in this, and allows her to leave to live with her grandparents—much as Tuck feels pride rather than grief at Winnie’s aging and death.

“Six weeks after Finch and me came to the woods, thanks to Scotland’s newspapers, I knew all the things Judge and Mrs. Judge and all the papers said about me. How they chose to spin things. How they could take something true and bend it just a tiny bit, word it just so, and I end up looking like a first-rate monster.”

Cooper’s reflection on the events surrounding his flight to the woods and, more importantly, the way those events were depicted, reveal some of the reasons for his distrust of the broader world. Moreover, he also distrusts Cindy’s parents, the “Judges,” having seen how their version of events made him seem monstrous. He now worries that Marie might discover those same accounts, eight years later, and conclude that he is not the man she thinks he is. Cooper’s fear discloses a lack of trust in his own strength of character and an internalized sense that, because of his PTSD, no one will be inclined to consider his side of the story.

“The only thing Jake asked was whether we were all right. Whether we needed anything. Didn’t tell me I’d screwed up. Didn’t try to convince me to change my course.”

Cooper relates how Jake—Marie’s brother—had responded to his phone call without judgment when he first came to the woods with Finch. Marie’s reaction suggests that she knew her late brother was a good person in a general sense, but that she did not know all the details about their relationship.

“Maybe I’m being sentimental about this, but I’m telling you: something has shifted in [Finch]. Whereas before, she possessed a sort of confidence in her limbs and countenance, now there’s doubt, and it flickers and looms and radiates out. Like she has somehow gotten smaller, like she has grown less sure of the world.”

What Cooper notices about Finch is her discovery of The Ambiguity of Right and Wrong. Her “shift” occurs after she saves Casey from her boyfriend and is scolded for it. She struggles to reconcile how doing the right thing—saving an innocent girl—can receive a reprimand from her father, who also grapples with whether it was the right or wrong choice. This “shift” is largely due to her struggle to understand the world and, to this point, the ambiguity that exists in it—due to her isolation in the cabin.

“There is a moment, in parachuting, when you must yield yourself to the pull of the earth. […] The first few times, my instinct was to panic. I would think about what if the parachute didn’t open, what if I got tangled up, couldn’t open my arms and legs wide, what if I died. But after a while, I learned to like it. That feeling of letting go. Surrendering.”

As Cooper makes the decision to go to the police station, he recalls the adrenaline rush that came from parachuting, particularly in the moment of surrendering himself and his body to free fall—that moment when no amount of planning or effort can fully ensure his safety. He thinks about this sensation of surrender, of going beyond the scope of what could be planned for, as he heads to the police station and finally reveals Finch’s past to her.

“The thing is, there are consequences for those choices, and going to the police means I need to face them. Which I’m ready to do.”

Turning himself in means that Cooper is finally ready to act on the sense of responsibility that he has avowed throughout the text. More than that, he conveys this resolution to Finch after years of avoiding the question of his actions and his culpability. By going to the police under his own power, rather than waiting to be arrested, Cooper hopes to maintain the dignity of this realization.

“All those years of his spying and meddling—for the first time, I wonder if maybe all along what he wanted was to help us, in his own strange way.”

This quote shows the moment where Cooper first realizes that Scotland is not, in fact, an enemy, but truly was attempting to help Cooper and Finch. To this point, Cooper has seen his good deeds—his gifts and connection with Finch, his “spying” on the cabin, his providing them with information through the newspapers—as wholly negative, often feeling as though Scotland had sinister intentions. However, Scotland turns out to be the person that saves him.