“The Last Thing He Told Me” by Laura Dave: “Parts” and “Witness Protection” as Metaphors for Multiple Personality

Hannah receives a one-line, two-word note, “Protect her,” from her husband, known to her as Owen, implying he is leaving, and that his last wish is that she protect his daughter from a previous marriage: 

“Part of me still wants to hold on to this one last moment—the moment where you still get to believe this is a joke, an error, a big nothing; the moment before you know for sure that something has started that you can no longer stop (1, p. 8).

[When they had first met] “I’m not saying it was love at first sight. What I’m saying is that a part of me wanted to do something to stop him from walking away…” (1, p. 14).

“If a part of you thinks that it will change one day,” he says. That one day this will go away and Ethan [Owen] can come back to you…That’s untenable. These men [gangsters], they don’t forget. That can never happen” (1, p. 280). So the authorities have been recommending Witness Protection, which Hannah has refused.

Comment: From beginning to end of this novel, more than one character expresses the author’s apparent notion that people have “parts,” which, as I’ve discussed in past posts, is a euphemism for alternate personalities.

The recommendations by the police in this novel for “Witness Protection” has made it occur to me that it is a good metaphor for multiple personality, because alternate personalities originate to protect a person who has experienced or witnessed trauma.

1. Laura Dave. The Last Thing He Told Me. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2021.