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 Sheridan has “stopped trying to bring [Eleanor] back.” She comes to him now only in dreams. Occasionally, while driving to work or out about town, he thinks he sees a flash of her red hair, but Eleanor is never really there. Eleanor’s absence distresses Park—in being gone, she is “ruining everything.”
This brief prologue shows that Eleanor and Park—the novel’s titular protagonists—will be separated at some point in the future, and that there will be a sense of longing and resentment between them.
Themes
