Fall on your Knees

Given the Gothic history of the Piper family, the moment when Lily looks at the family tree Mercedes has created and declares, “Look, we are all in it” (508) is a harbinger of potential psychological health. Anthony, rescued at last by his aunt Mercedes, delivers the scroll that exposes the seamy details of the Piper clan. The elegant scroll, the result of years of diligent effort by Mercedes, symbolizes the final disinterring of corrosive secrets.

Unlike the family’s toxic environment of lies and hidden horrors, the family tree charts out in clean and clear truth all of their relationships, documenting the births out of wedlock, the deaths by suicide, and taboo love affairs that have so far gone unacknowledged: “Next to Kathleen, an equal sign joins her name to Rose’s” (508). In fact, Mercedes buries in the backyard her first attempt at a family tree as it was something of a scandal. As the nuns tirelessly point out in classroom catechism, that concept of the tree of life, applied to humanity, is cause for shame and self-loathing. Through Adam’s fall—the nuns indoctrinate the Piper girls—we all sin.

The nature-based metaphor of the tree symbolizes how a family grows and branches out—each generation is distinct, and each also bound to the next in a system of emotional and psychological connectedness that makes history valuable.