Closed Cycle of Justice
The author has explained in various interviews that the story pursues a theme identified as the “closed cycle of justice” as opposed to the “open cycle of justice.” The difference between the two is simply a question of action. The “open” type is purely random; fate alone has determined the recipient of justice. The “closed” type, on the other hand, requires an initiating action on the part of the recipient in order to bring cosmic retribution upon them. In this case, four friends take the critical action of going on a hunting trip that they shouldn’t have taken and it is the consequences of that decision which sets in motion the cycle of justice.
Reservation Life
Beneath the horror element of the plot are scene which could—in a completely different sort of novel—be a fascinating tale of what it is like to grow up on Native American reservation. Despite the fact that it has been either indirectly or directly touched upon in everything from the film Smoke Signals to the non-fiction best-seller Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope, much of white America remains completely ignorant of the elevated status that basketball has on reservations. And, indeed, basketball takes a central role in the portrait of reservation like which the book paints as background material behind the slasher tale which gets enjoys the spotlight.
Native American Onryo
You know all those creepy ghost girls with long stringy hair in Asian horror movies? They are technically known as an onryō and they go way back in Asian culture as representatives of retributive justice delivered from the afterlife. Elk Head Woman is a pretty creepy physical manifestation in her own right (her name kind of gives much of that appearance away); surely the equal of the scariest of those onryōs that populate Asian ghost revenge horror films. Equally true is that Elk Head Woman serves much the same purpose. She exists only partially as a ghost per se and the more important aspect of her elemental being is that she is an avenging angel or, depending on perspective, demon. That Elk Head Woman and the onryō both deal out retributive vengeance with the requirement of returning from the afterlife must surely say something about the role of women in these two otherwise starkly different continental cultures.
