Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child sexual abuse.

Hopkins uses the motif of God and religion to symbolize judgment and develop the theme of The Impact of Family and Societal Pressures on Youth. Despite their religious upbringing, each teenager brings up religious imagery, which signifies how religious judgment is embedded in society. This judgment is closely tied to sex as the teenagers struggle to figure out if they believe in sex to show love or if they believe that it is only meant to control others. Eden repeatedly describes her fear of “burning” if she touches Andrew, which symbolizes her fear of hell or punishment. Seth’s experience listening to his mother discuss his cousin’s teenage pregnancy led him to conclude that many people believe that sex outside of marriage makes someone a “whore,” especially since his mother said that it makes his cousin “a whore in God’s eyes” (20).

Seth also finds himself wondering if Satan has developed new skills and tries to hurt people through love rather than tempting them to sin. Even the concept of the setting of the novel being in “Sin City” shows how Hopkins uses the symbols of religion to fuel the

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