Con artistry is a motif for exploring The Malleability of Identity. The novel’s con artists easily lie, dissemble, and reconstitute themselves as different people, and not many people question them. Though they are characters in and of themselves, they become symbolic when contrasted with the same dishonest behavior of characters who aren’t professional con artists. Selena even thinks, about her husband, “But that guy, the one she married, he was a con. This man before her someone blank, someone dangerous, he was always inside, waiting to get out. Bait and switch” (329). Here, ironically, she even uses the word “con” to describe Graham without knowing that a family of con artists is trying to take advantage of her.

Pop often dispenses wisdom about conning to Pearl, and two examples stand out as quotes that encompass themes; the first is “If you aren’t running a game, someone [is] running one on you” (24). This means that essentially, everyone tells lies or pretends to be someone else, and it’s not that different from the kind of games that con artists play. Later in the novel when Pop and Pearl are talking about their fathers, Pop says, “Maybe that’s the best lesson of all [.