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
Eleanor arrives at the Tesco. She enjoys herself, taking her time as she wanders through the aisles. When she arrives at the bakery section of the store, she spots the musician and is immediately overjoyed at this fateful encounter, imagining herself to be a heroine in a Thomas Hardy novel. Johnnie looks handsome, albeit somewhat tired and scruffy. Because Eleanor isn’t wearing makeup or her new clothes, she isn’t ready to introduce herself to him.
Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era; Eleanor frequently imagines that she is the heroine of a romantic novel. In so doing, she casts herself outside of reality, projecting her ideals onto a fantasy so that she doesn’t have to admit to herself that they aren’t real and are thus ultimately unattainable for her.
Themes
Eleanor arrives at the register to find that fate has placed Johnnie one person ahead of her in line. Eleanor looks at the contents of his shopping cart: breakfast supplies, orange juice “with bits,” and Nurofen tablets. Eleanor almost steps forward to tell the musician that he’s wasting his money—that generic painkillers are more inexpensive and just as good as Nurofen—but she resists, reasoning that she needs to make a more memorable first impression.
Even though Eleanor makes her observation of fate in jest, framing this meeting as a fateful occurrence nonetheless speaks to how in denial she is about the prospect of her chances with the musician. Given that Eleanor usually says exactly what is on her mind, it’s out of character for her not to tell the musician that he’s wasting money on name-brand painkillers.
Themes
The musician pays for his groceries with a credit card, handing it to a checkout woman “oblivious” to the musician’s charm and good looks. After the musician leaves, Eleanor can’t help herself and sends a tweet from “A Concerned Friend” advocating for the perks of a Tesco Club Card. Featured below Eleanor’s tweet is one of the musician’s tweets, in which he berates Tesco for “pushing Big Brother spy-slash-loyalty on here.” He includes the hashtags “#hungover” and “#fightthepower.”
The checkout woman is “oblivious” to the musician’s charms because he seemingly isn’t likeable to others, but Eleanor is too in denial to realize this. Honeyman includes these last two contrasting tweets to reinforce how incompatible the musician is with Eleanor, as well as Eleanor’s inability to pick up on this incompatibility.
Themes
