Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Everything, Everything, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age
Trust and Lies
Family, Abuse, and Bravery
The Value of Experience
Summary
Analysis
Maddy creates a fake webdoc.com entry for a disease she calls Hysterical Abdominal Rhopalocera, or having monarch butterflies in one’s stomach. It affects at least one teen girl every 30 seconds and symptoms include nausea, light-headedness, elevated heart rate, and the inability to focus. It’s triggered by contact with a romantic interest, though acute sufferers can experience episodes just by thinking about their crush.
Imagining this new disease is a safe way for Maddy to try to make sense of the new feelings she’s experiencing after seeing Olly. In this sense, it reflects her still sheltered life while showing that she’s having to come up with new ways of understanding what she’s experiencing.
Themes
