Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Eleanor and Park, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Adolescence and Shame
Love and Intimacy
Poverty and Class
Family and Abuse
Summary
Analysis
As Eleanor leaves for school the next morning, she feels better than the day before. She feels like she’s carrying Park’s music “in her chest, somehow.” The music has made Eleanor feel like “the world [isn’t] what she’d thought it was.” As she boards the bus, she immediately makes eye contact with Park, and they smile widely at one another. Eleanor sits down, and after a moment of awkward silence, Park asks her if she listened to the tape—Eleanor begins gushing about the music, and they have an impassioned discussion about bands like the Smiths and Joy Division. The conversation turns to comics, and Park promises to bring Eleanor some volumes that will change her mind about “boring Batman.”
This passage shows more acutely how music is a symbol for connection, confidence, intimacy, and self-love. As Eleanor journeys through Park’s music, she feels herself growing closer to him—and closer to her own desires, less bothered by the opinions and actions of those around her who seek to tear her down.
Themes
Throughout the school day in the classes they share, Eleanor and Park begin noticing more and more about one another. Park notices the softness of Eleanor’s hair, while Eleanor worries that a girl in their history class, Kim, has a crush on Park.
Music is bringing Eleanor and Park closer to one another, and they are looking at each other with increasingly open minds and hearts as their relationship deepens.
Themes
That night, Park makes Eleanor a new tape—and empties the batteries from all of his and Josh’s video game remotes to give to her.
Park wants to keep growing closer to Eleanor, and music continues to be the conduit between their very different lives.
Themes
