Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Enduring Impact of Trauma
Shame and the Stigmatization of Pain
Projection and Denial
The Vicious Circle of Isolation and Social Awkwardness
Summary
Analysis
When people ask the narrator what she does for a living, she tells them she works in an office, preferring not to bore her audience with the mundane reality of her work: she works for a graphic design agency as a finance clerk. She is nearly 30 years old and has been at her current job since she was 21. She believes the owner, Bob, hired her because he felt sorry for her: she’d shown up to her interview with a black eye, missing teeth, and a broken arm. He also might have assumed that someone like her would never have to request time off work for a honeymoon or maternity leave.
The fact that the narrator doesn’t want to bore or burden others with the details of her mundane job alerts the reader to her insecurities and hints at her unwillingness to open up to other people. The injuries that the narrator had at her interview are serious and jarring given that she seems to lead a rather boring, ordinary life—it remains to be seen what (or who) hurt her.
Themes
The narrator runs through her weekly schedule: Monday through Friday, she arrives at the office at 8:30 a.m. She takes an hour for lunch every day, eating a sandwich in the staff room as she reads the newspaper and completing the crossword puzzle in the Daily Telegraph. She works until 5:30 p.m. and takes the bus home. Dinner consists of a simple pasta with pesto and a salad. After dinner, she reads or watches television. Friday evenings, she stops by the Tesco Metro by the office and buys a frozen pizza, wine, and two bottles of Glen’s vodka, which she drinks over the weekend.
The precision and regularity of the narrator’s schedule shows that she substitutes routine for human interaction. The predictability of the narrator’s schedule provides her with a sense of comfort that she isn’t getting elsewhere due to her lack of social interaction. It’s rather excessive for one person to drink three bottles of alcohol over the course of a weekend—the narrator seems to has a drinking problem that she isn’t (directly) admitting to the reader or to herself. This introduces the reader to the narrator’s habit of repressing the things she doesn’t want to, or isn’t able to, acknowledge.
Themes
The narrator’s phone hardly ever rings, and the only people who visit her apartment are service workers. This lack of human interactions leads the narrator to sometimes wonder whether she’s “a figment of [her] own imagination,” and she occasionally loses touch with reality. These feelings are somewhat alleviated during the work week, when she must send emails and interact with her coworkers, Janey, Loretta, Bernadette, and Billy. She wonders if any of these people would notice if she died and stopped showing up to work one day.
The narrator’s lack of guests is further proof of her social isolation. The fact that the narrator wonders whether she’s “a figment of [her] imagination” foreshadows the significant role her imagination plays in the novel, and it potentially calls her sanity and thus her reliability as a narrator into question. She also has a rather disturbingly low sense of self-esteem, as evidenced by her uncertainty that it would bother her coworkers if she passed away.
Themes
The narrator recalls going to the doctor yesterday for back pain. She humorously suggests to the doctor that her breasts are likely the cause of the pain: she weighed them with a kitchen scale, and the two of them weighed half a stone combined. These comments make the doctor uncomfortable, and he responds to them stiffly. He writes her a prescription for more painkillers and a refill on her eczema medication. The narrator leaves and reflects on the doctor’s “terrible bedside manner.”
The narrator freely says whatever is on her mind, often at the expense of other people’s comfort, and this awkward interaction with the doctor is an example of this habit. It’s humorous that the narrator laments the doctor’s “terrible bedside manner,” given that the narrator is herself so terrible at making people feel at ease. The cavalier way in which the narrator treats her pain, as well as the ease with which the doctor prescribes her painkillers, perhaps implies that the narrator abuses medication in the same way she seems to abuse alcohol.
Themes
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But her doctor’s appointment was yesterday, “in a different life.” Today, life is different, because the narrator—who introduces herself as Eleanor Oliphant—has met her soul mate. Eleanor is normally proud of her self-sufficiency, but she’s forced to question it after seeing the love of her life “onstage.” Eleanor says that she knew that this man was the man for her upon seeing that he was wearing his three-piece suit with the bottom button unbuttoned, which “Mummy” believes is the sign of a true gentleman. Eleanor knows Mummy will be thrilled to hear about this new, handsome man.
Eleanor’s belief that yesterday was “in a different life” is a bold statement—it shows the confidence she has in other people’s and things’ ability to enact meaningful changes in her life. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Eleanor chooses to believe in the transformative power of external forces (like a potential relationship with this performer). At this point, it seems that Eleanor seeks escapism through alcohol, painkillers, and fantasies of romance. This, combined with the mysterious wounds Eleanor sustained at age 21, suggests that she’s likely experienced some sort of past trauma. Further, the fact that she’s an unreliable narrator means that she could be intentionally hiding this from the reader—or perhaps even repressing it in her own mind.
Themes
