The Butcher Game

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, graphic violence, child abuse, and mental illness.

Justice is an important ideal for Wren, who views it as a responsibility she must strive for professionally and personally. As a forensic pathologist, Wren feels a duty toward the corpses she analyzes—the bodies of people who have met a violent and horrific end and whose murders she works to solve. Wren thus views forensic pathology as the practice of listening to the dead. When she investigates Jeremy’s house alongside Leroux, she feels this weight: “Wren feels as if the ghosts of the house are clawing at her, asking for her to listen” (58). At the same time, knowing how close she came to joining the ghosts lurking in Jeremy’s bayou, Wren also feels motivated to catch Jeremy to make restitution for her own trauma. 

Despite her ordeal, Wren has no desire to torment Jeremy to exact vengeance; instead, she is dedicated to making sure that he faces the correct legal consequences for his crimes. However, her commitment to catching Jeremy does often turn into a type of fixation that borders on vigilantism. On leave to recover from her second encounter with Jeremy, Wren struggles to sit back and allow the investigation to proceed without her: She wants to “be able to let go of the reins and allow justice to let her know when it was complete” (71), but keeping her distance from the Butcher case only increases her anxiety.