Silvie is embarrassed and refuses to explain. One night when Molly notices the lashings, she presses Silvie about them. The students struggle to understand Bill's cruelty.įor days afterwards, Silvie struggles to move or sleep, her wounds aching.

Back at the campsite he demands she butcher all the rabbits he and the Professor caught by herself. Disgusted and enraged by Silvie's exposure, Bill forces Silvie against a tree and brutally beats her with his belt. While the moment affords her a moment of independence and seeming privacy, it is fleeting, abruptly interrupted by her father's emergence. Mimicking Molly's inhibition, Silvie takes off her clothes before entering the stream. When they return to the campsite, Silvie retreats to the stream by herself, hoping to ease her severe sunburn in the water. Listening to and watching them interact, Silvie envies their freedom, their ability to express themselves, and imagine a future for their lives. While on the beach, Silvie is shocked when Molly tears off her clothes and swims with the boys.

The students, however, do not mind Silvie's input, and admire how much she knows about history and the environment. She helps the students read the land and find the water with ease, all the while criticizing herself for acting like a know-it-all. One day in particular while venturing out to the beach in search of mussels, Silvie finds her voice. Though Silvie is initially withdrawn around the students, she gradually opens up to them. Silvie pities her, wishing her mother had the liberty to leave and return to the comforts of her armchair. Alison, however, remains mute and submissive at the fire. As their stay in the woods goes on, the Professor urges Silvie to go off with the students, which her father reluctantly allows. He even insists that he and his family stay in a lightless hunt while the rest of the group stays in individual tents slightly away from the campsite. He demands his wife stay by the fire at all times, and limits his daughter's independence throughout the trip. While the students are free to do as they wish within the loose parameters of the trip, Silvie finds herself increasingly entrapped by her father's dedication to the experience.īill refuses to allow any of the group members to eat anything other than what is foraged or hunted.

After Bill establishes a relationship with the Professor, he convinces him to allow his family to join their reenactment of pre-modern hunter-gatherer traditions in the woods. In Ghost Wall, 17-year-old Silvie ventures into the woods on an archeological experiment with her mother Alison, father Bill, an archeological professor, Jim Slade, and three of his students, Molly, Dan, and Pete. The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Moss, Sarah.

The ghost wall sarah moss