Shred Sisters

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, death, bullying, and sexual content.

“My first tormentor, she was ingenious in keeping her tactics beneath my parents’ radar. When we fought, they always said the same thing: they didn’t care who started it, we should sort it out ourselves.”

Amy speaks of her older sister, Ollie, and foreshadows her own experiences of bullying at school and beyond. The description of the sisters’ asymmetrical “fights” also reveals Ollie’s intelligence, as well as Amy’s frustration with her sister.

“She was used to getting her way, it was only a matter of finding the right combination. She could soften my father with a pouty frown; our mother wasn’t as easy to crack. She believed that Ollie had been indulged because of her beauty; she learned that she could take advantage of people and get away with bad behavior.”

The manipulative behavior that Amy describes here is eventually framed as part of Ollie’s mental illness—or, at least, as part of the way in which she copes with her mental illness. The passage thus foreshadows Ollie’s coming struggles. In addition, it clearly shows the parents’ tendencies toward denial: Dad indulges Ollie’s behavior, while Mom misunderstands its source. Neither can bring themselves to believe that Ollie’s behavior might stem from illness, something that Ollie cannot fully control without treatment.

“She said a life of crime wasn’t for everyone. She loved all the movie outlaws: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, but most of all, the con artist father-daughter duo in the movie Paper Moon.”

Ollie aggrandizes her exploits, framing them in terms of her favorite characters. Ollie’s love of film is telling, as she herself will become quite adept at acting, which serves as another way in which to cope with (or mask) her mental illness. The comparison to Paper Moon highlights the dysfunctional relationship that Ollie develops with Dad: Together, they work to “con” their way out of the consequences of Ollie’s encounters with the law.