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’s spoiler review of The Little Prince is that love is worth everything. She lands in New York. She only told Olly that there’s a gift waiting for him at a used bookstore near his house and spent the flight imagining their kiss-filled reunion. Maddy gets out of the cab and enters the bookstore. It’s dim and smells old. She takes the 15 minutes before Olly is due to gawk at the books. When it’s almost time, Maddy’s stomach fills with butterflies and she hides. Olly appears a few minutes later. He is, for once, not wearing all black—his tee shirt is gray. Maddy begins to panic at seeing him so different, but she reasons that she’s not the same anymore either.
That Olly is wearing a gray T-shirt suggests that when not living under his dad’s thumb, he’s becoming a happier person and is experimenting with who he’d like to be going forward. Maddy’s ability to accept that Olly has changed shows that she’s beginning to realize that experiences influence everyone in different ways, but this doesn’t mean that another person’s experience needs to be threatening to her.
Themes
Olly pulls out his phone to check Maddy’s directions, which are that he’ll know the gift when he sees it in the S-U aisle. He finds Maddy’s book set in front of the others and stares at it. Maddy thinks that she knows now that there’s not just one moment that brought her here—there are many moments, and a person’s life can change in many different ways depending on their choices. There are many different versions of her life. In some she’s sick; in others she died in Hawaii; and in some, Maddy’s dad and brother are alive. In this version, however, Olly is in her life. As Olly picks up the book, Maddy walks toward him. Olly smiles.
Maddy’s choice to accept that no matter what might have happened, this is the life she has shows that she now understands that she has the power to, in many ways, make her life what she wants it. She’s a young adult with a credit card and a boy who loves her, and now that she’s separated from Mom, she’s able to give herself experiences that will bring her and Olly closer as they move further toward independence.
Themes
