My Heart Is a Chainsaw

Indian Lake symbolizes history, and who is included and excluded from the story of a place. The town of Proofrock is built on the shores of the lake and the new development of Terra Nova is being constructed on the other shore. While the lake connects these places, allowing for the Founders to travel back and forth between their new homes and the small town, it also separates them, indicating that the Founders are not yet integrated into the town’s history. Inclusion in community is consistently compared to the idea of burial. One of the Founders jokes that his definition of home is where his beloved pet dog is buried. Similarly, Jade observes that “Indian Lake is big, and dark, and quiet, and it’s been swallowing bodies since forever” (350). The story of Ezekiel the preacher and the community of Henderson-Golding, AKA Drown Town, is particularly relevant to the symbolic meaning of Indian Lake. Jade reports that “when Henderson-Golding was being flooded with what would become Indian Lake, he’d locked his congregation into his one-room church with him, and they sang until the waters swamped the town, and are maybe, Jade said in her conclusion, still singing, awaiting the day they can rise from the depths to punish the town that replaced Henderson-Golding” (89).