The 'Sharp Objects' finale proved the dark power of generational trauma

This article contains spoilers for the finale of Sharp Objects.

However much Sharp Objects seemed like a murder mystery, the finale turned out to be a devastating example of the generational harm done by abuse, neglect, and mental illness on families that don’t have the tools to manage their trauma.

Before Amma, there was Camille. Before Camille, Adora. And before Adora, there was Joya. Three generations of Preaker women and not one of them was untouched by the cruelty and madness of their town and place.

While Joya Preaker’s role in perpetuating and perhaps creating a cycle that led to her daughter and granddaughter becoming murderers was largely offscreen, her presence and influence on Adora felt oppressively present through the finale.

Adora’s smothering approach to motherhood — literally killing her children by “caring” for them too hard — read as a course correct from Joya’s neglectful parenting. Adora’s core directive, Munchausen and all, is to have children who can’t live without her because her own mother didn’t care if she lived at all.

Of course, Adora’s overcompensation had different effects on her daughters. Camille was an independent-minded child, and her desire to be her own person struck Adora as rejection. That rejection turned into a palpable hatred that turned Adora against Camille, who spiraled into suicidal depression later in life; ironically, it was Camille’s willfulness that eventually saved her life, as she refused to take Adora’s “medicine” as a child.

Amma, however, was the one daughter who fully accepted Adora’s parenting and even took some joy in being coddled-slash-poisoned by her mother. The bizarre, abusive environment in which she grew up — being looked up to by Wind Gap society while her mother slowly poisons her with antifreeze — molded Amma into the product of every Preaker woman’s mistakes and abuses: a literal cold-hearted murderer.

It’s always hairy going into the psychological roots of homicidal individuals, but had Adora not corrupted Amma’s brain with antifreeze from a young age and obsessed over keeping her like a doll it’s...more than possible that Amma would have turned out as something less frightening than a triple murderer.

With the circumstances of her upbringing it’s easy to see how Amma became the Wind Gap killer, but with two generations of abuse and neglect sitting on her shoulders it’s also easy to see that it wasn’t entirely her fault.

Sharp Objects is all about how events of the past, even ones people have no control over, can shape who they become. Joya laid the fuse, Adora struck the match, and no one after them survived the explosion.