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
Eleanor never opens any of Park’s letters. Countless times she gets out a pen and piece of paper and starts writing to him, but “Everything she [feels] for him [is] too hot to touch.”
It hurts Eleanor too much to put her feelings of sadness and longing into words, so instead, she keeps them pent up.
Themes
Back in Omaha, Park begins wearing his eyeliner in thick black smudges and listening to loud, angry punk music at full volume to drown out his feelings. He gets a job at a record store and pines for Eleanor every day. He stops sending her letters—but continues writing to her and keeping the unsent missives in a box under his bed.
Park can’t let Eleanor go, and wants to drown out everything else but his memories of her so that he doesn’t lose the feelings he has for her. It’s better, in Park’s mind, to be miserable about Eleanor than to forget the intensity of their love.
Themes
