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
A week later, Carla asks how long Maddy is going to mope. Maddy denies that she’s moping, but she is—Olly’s rejection made her feel like a kid and reminded her why she stopped paying attention to the outside world. Now, however, it’s hard to get back to her routine when she’s begun to notice the birds, the wind, and the sunlight again. Carla points out that Maddy has been reading the same five pages of Lord of the Flies for days, but Maddy insists that it’s a terrible book about awful boys. Finally, Maddy admits that she just wants the new neighbors to go away, as it was easier to be sick before they moved in.
Maddy’s explanation makes it very clear that she’s done everything in her power to come to terms with her situation, and that entails simply going through life as though the outside world doesn’t exist. Reading is, in this sense, the only way that Maddy is able to connect with the outside world in a meaningful way, given that books seem to give her a pleasant outlet in a way that looking out the window doesn’t right now.
Themes
Firmly, Carla says that Maddy is going to be fine. She was sure when she started caring for Maddy that Maddy would get depressed living like this, but Maddy has done a fantastic job of keeping herself happy and occupied. Carla continues that Rosa could learn from Maddy—she has everything Carla can give, but thinks she has nothing. Maddy tells the reader that a concise summary of Lord of the Flies would simply be that boys are savages.
Though the novel overwhelmingly comes down on the side of insisting that firsthand experience is superior to vicarious experiences in almost all ways, what Carla says about Rosa insists that there’s still something to be said for growing up as Maddy has: accepting what one has is, in a sense, the key to happiness.
Themes
