Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in All the Bright Places, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mental Health, Stigma, and Suicide
Community, Support, and Trust
Individuality and Identity
Language, Meaning, and Control
Grief, Trauma, Purpose, and Survivorship
Summary
Analysis
Finch feels like last night is a “puzzle,” but one that isn’t put together. His heart beats too fast. Finch tries to read the books Decca cut words out of, but the words blur. He starts to organize his room and decides he needs a change. He drives to the hardware store and buys 10 gallons of blue paint. After several coats, the red is still showing through the blue paint, “like the walls are bleeding.” Finch sleeps in the middle of his room with an old blue comforter of Kate’s. After two days, the walls are blue like a swimming pool. Finch can catch his breath. He leaves the ceiling white, since white contains the wavelengths of all colors. Finch messages Violet that she’s all the colors, “at full brightness.”
Finch is starting to lose his ability to make sense of the written word. Even Decca’s exclusively happy books don’t make sense anymore, which suggests that it’s becoming more difficult for Finch to latch onto happy moments. Painting his room blue, like a swimming pool, is his attempt to connect himself to water. He wants to see water as healing and as someplace where he can “catch his breath.” But water is also destructive and dangerous—so Finch’s bedroom color may also ominously foreshadow a severe depressive episode.
Themes
