49 pages • 1 hour read
Elsie SilverWild Side
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2025A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Rhys’s Mask
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to the death of a loved one.
Rhys Garrison’s Wild Side mask is symbolic of identity. Rhys wears the mask when he’s inhabiting his Wild Side role as a professional wrestler. With the mask on, Rhys can “leave Rhys behind” and inhabit an alternate sense of self (217). As Wild Side, he feels strong, powerful, and indomitable. The mask lets him embody a more controlled state of being. With the mask, Rhys is the alluring, sexy, and undefeated wrestling champion. Without it, Rhys feels more vulnerable and less capable of hiding from his sorrow and pain. Where “Wild Side is just fine with expressing himself, Rhys is more like squeezing blood from rocks where emotions are concerned” (224).
Rhys’s relationship with the mask provides insight into his true character. When Anthony tells him that he wants Rhys to let Elle unmask him in one of his matches, Rhys hesitates. He fears that this act of unmasking will endanger him personally and expose Tabitha and Milo to unwanted media attention. Rhys has never bridged the divide between his true self and his wrestling self; the mask lets him preserve these compartmentalized identities. When he lets Tabitha unmask him at the championship, he is allowing his two versions of self to coexist. Through the mask, the novel shows how identity is multifaceted and composed of dichotomous parts.
Erika the Plant
The plant that Tabitha and Milo buy and name Erika is symbolic of grief and loss. Tabitha gets the plant immediately after her sister passes away and Milo moves in with her. She assumes that he “needs a pet,” but hopes that the plant can ease his sorrow for a time (98). The way that Milo responds to the plant exemplifies his distinct mode of grieving his late mom:
In a dark twist, Milo named the plant I brought back from her house in Emerald Lake ‘Erika.’ Every morning, he gets up and greets her by name. It shouldn’t be funny, but it makes us both laugh. And strangely, I find myself smiling over at the plant when something cute happens with Milo, as though I’m looking at my sister and exchanging a look that says this kid (98).
Tabitha and Milo’s relationship with Erika the Plant helps them to actively preserve Erika’s memory in the narrative present and adds levity to their lives. The plant represents Erika’s presence—she maintains a role in her sister and son’s life via the plant. In these ways, the plant helps the characters to honor and remember Erika. Throughout the novel, the characters consistently interact with and care for Erika the Plant. Doing so is a way for them to channel, cope with, and process their loss. The plant, a living thing, illustrates how even death can beget life, and how loss can beget renewal.
Erika’s Journals
Erika’s journals are symbolic of vulnerability and understanding. Silver uses them to provide insight into Erika’s life from the time of Milo’s conception to Erika’s death. Without the journals, Tabitha and Rhys wouldn’t fully understand Erika’s life with addiction, her insecurities (particularly about herself and her relationships), and her reasons for pushing Tabitha away and lying to Rhys.
Reading Erika’s journals allows Tabitha to grieve for her sister for the first time since her death. She discovers and reads them when she’s at home alone one day. She thus has the space and time to emote authentically—an experience brought about by the journals themselves. In particular, reading Erika’s first-person account makes Tabitha realize the depth of her sister’s frustration, fear, and need: “And all that’s left in its wake is an all-consuming agony” (300). Tabitha begins to understand that Erika did need her but that she also felt frustrated with Tabitha’s methods of caring for her.
Tabitha emotes in response to what she’s learned about Erika’s struggles and her own failures. The journals have a similar impact on Rhys. He doesn’t have the same history with Erika as Tabitha, but reading her account helps Rhys to understand Erika better and inspires him to be more vulnerable with Tabitha. While the journals initially cause Rhys and Tabitha pain, they ultimately offer gateways to understanding, empathy, and reconciliation.
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