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
Park and his friend Cal are sitting in the school library, and Cal is scheming about how to ask Kim—a preppy, popular girl—out on a date. Park thinks that the blonde, prim Kim is out of Cal’s league, but Cal will not be talked down—he is determined to get a girlfriend, and wants to “start at the top” and work his way down the social food chain of girls. Cal suggests Park get a girlfriend, too, so that they can go for double dates in Park’s family’s Impala. Park, though, tells Cal not to get his hopes up—Park and his father are fighting about Park’s driver’s license, and Park’s father is insisting Park learn to drive stick before taking the test.
This passage serves a dual function: it shows how pressing and immersive Park finds the small, quotidian social problems he faces at school, and it also shows that how compared to Eleanor, his actual problems are extremely insignificant.
Themes
Cal points out “a girl who might want a piece of [Park,]” and Park looks over to see Eleanor staring right at him. Park insists that Eleanor isn’t staring at him—she’s just staring. Park has noticed that Eleanor rarely makes eye contact or says hello to anyone, and yet seems to dress as if she’s screaming for attention. Park feels he has to constantly “brace [him]self” for the sight of Eleanor.
Even though Park and Eleanor haven’t yet spoken, this brief moment shows that Park already feels a kind of reluctant intimacy with her. He knows her mannerisms, and in spite of the ways in which she makes him nervous, he also finds her arresting and interesting.
Themes
Eleanor sits in the African American history section of the library, thinking about how “fucked-up” the school’s racial disparities are. Though most of the kids at school are black, most all of the honors students in Eleanor’s advanced classes are white and are bused in from another neighborhood. Eleanor’s honors classes are, she feels, a relief from the “Crazytown” atmosphere of her other, regular classes. She feels determined to do well in her “smart classes” so that she isn’t kicked out of them.
Rowell’s novel, set in 1986, engages with the lingering effects of segregation in America and the practice of busing. However, Rowell’s choice to use these important social issues as a kind of set dressing—or to give her major white characters a kind of “pass” to think racist thoughts, given the less politically correct atmosphere of the mid-eighties—has garnered criticism in the years since the book’s release.
Themes
