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Dark Secrets In Jodi Picoult's Salem Falls

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What would your mindset be, if you were accused over and over, on something that you never did? Even to be arrested for it more than once? In the book Salem Falls, Jodi Picoult, conveys her beliefs in how dark secrets can unfold an innocent person 's life, causing the truth to be looked at as a faraway fantasy. Jack St. Bride, the man accused in this novel for sexual assault, never knew that “ You can’t learn the world from a book…” (34). He had to figure out himself just how belligerent the world could be. Thankfully, he didn’t have to find out alone.

Jack St. Bride had secrets. These secrets, he would have liked to be kept hidden, if not for a group of Wiccans in Salem Falls. One of the Wiccans, named Gillian Duncan, had a special interest in Jack the moment she had laid eyes on him. This interest led her to believe that he loved her back, as much as she did. The problem with this was that Gillian was extremely underage. Jodi Picoult explains in her book, that this incident had happened in …show more content…

Not only was Jack pronounced innocent, but it turned out that Gillian had been receiving assault from a different person entirely. That person being her father Amos Duncan, which would be kept a secret between the two of them. In this book, even with the lies that were told, the truth came out at the end. Picoult was able to insinuate the importance of telling the truth before it makes a big mess in someone else’s life. “Maybe we were a little curious, too, to see if we could pull it off… Punishing him. Ruining his life. Making him leave Salem Falls. Gillian just wanted to get him back-- not for what he did to her, but for what he wouldn’t do” (431). Even though the truth looked far away to believe in, Jodi Picoult portrayed what dark secrets could do to unravel a person’s identity, but hopefully set them free in the

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