Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Illness
Storytelling, Memory, and Emotion
Love and Family
Responsibility and the Medical System
Summary
Analysis
By early 2010, most of Susannah's friends and family agree that she's fully returned to normal. Allen and Mom decide to sell their home in Summit, and Susannah realizes she can't afford to live alone. After months of worrying, she brings up the possibility of moving in with Stephen. Though he's privately anxious about becoming Susannah's caregiver, he agrees without hesitation.
Susannah moving in with Stephen again situates apartments as being a marker of adulthood and maturity: this is a major step in Susannah's relationship with Stephen, and even if she's not entirely recovered, it asserts that she's well enough and adult enough to take this step.
Themes
Several months after this, Susannah finally feels like herself. She attends a cousin's wedding in June of 2010 and is able to make small talk and jokes. Her friends and family are open about talking about the different iterations of Susannah they experienced throughout her illness, and Susannah describes how she's changed after her illness. She says that when she compares photographs of herself, she sees something different in her eyes. She'll never grow hair over her biopsy scar, turning it into a permanent reminder that she'll never be exactly the same.
These physical reminders of the illness make sure that Susannah will never forget what happened, even if the memories themselves are fuzzy. Similarly, the fact that friends and family will openly talk about their personal experiences of Susannah's illness means that she'll forever have other accounts and memories to draw on as she continues to construct her own version of what happened.
Themes
Susannah admits that she now talks in her sleep nightly, and fears things she never did before. There's a 20% chance she'll relapse, and that could happen at any time. She also becomes scared sometimes when colors seem brighter than normal, or if she catches something out of the corner of her eye and isn't sure it's real.
Stephen has changed too: he's now a worrier. It took months for his and Susannah's relationship to return to one of equals, though he still worries. Susannah's parents are unable to maintain their civil relationship, and she thinks that some things never change. Sometimes, Susannah wonders if she truly has lost her spark and isn't actually recovered.
Stephen continues to worry about and care for Susannah long after her recovery. Their relationship remains stronger than it was before, but it will be forever colored by what happened.
Themes
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