Content Warning: This section discusses life in and escape from a cult and death.

Apples are directly symbolic of female power. They are associated with the biblical story of Eve, who chooses to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Initially, apples represent Joel’s control over Ivy, Mia, and the rest of the Community. Apple orchards are the setting of both Ivy’s initiation into the Community and her untimely death: Joel proposes to Ivy after talking with her in the apple orchard, and years later, she dies while harvesting apples. Because of this, Mia equates apples with the Community and her mother’s death and refuses to eat apples for most of her life. Joel uses apple tree leaves to maintain a constant threat to Mia after she leaves the Community, enhancing a sinister connotation with apples.

However, the meaning of apples shifts by the end of the novel as Nathaniel draws the connection between the apple and Eve not to exert control over Mia, as Joel did, but to convince her to overcome the fruit’s negative connotations in her life. After Mia finally eats an apple and relishes in its sweetness alongside the man she loves, the apple becomes a symbol of a woman’s power and capacity for understanding rather than a symbol of sin and immorality.