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 gives a review with spoilers for Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. She says that a person doesn’t exist if nobody can see them. Maddy wakes from a dream in which she’s in a field of poppies. Multiple iterations of Olly march toward her, wearing gas masks, bearing handcuffs, and crushing the poppies. Maddy spends her day trying not to think of Olly. It makes her think of how connected she was to the world a few days ago and how much hope she had. She vows to let Olly go and thinks she learned her lesson: love is deadly, and she’d rather be alive. Maddy feels like her heart has changed. She includes a heart-shaped map of her land of broken dreams.
Again, Maddy is only able to come to these conclusions about the uselessness of love and of life on the outside because she experienced it firsthand. However, it’s also worth considering that Maddy is mired in grief right now, which is certainly influencing her dark outlook on life and the value of trying to love. This makes it clear that Maddy’s assessments could easily change with time or with new experiences—if she allows herself to have any.
Themes
