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 allows that she should’ve tried on the swimsuit before she bought it as she studies her reflection in the mirror. The suit is a bright pink one-piece. The color makes her look flushed. Maddy confirms that her behind is covered and wonders how she’s supposed to be in public wearing so little. Olly knocks and asks if she’s snorkeling. Maddy pulls open the bathroom door quickly and Olly slowly looks her up and down. Maddy feels naked and tries to slow her heart, thinking that Olly looks like he’s starving. They agree that the swimsuit is small. Maddy includes drawings of several reef fish, including herself and Olly.
Though the bikini does, by design, make it clear to Maddy that she’s an adult woman with an adult’s body, the flushed look that the pink color gives her shows clearly that Maddy is coming into her own identity. Just as the color seems to be rubbing off on her, her newfound self-expression is similarly “coloring” her into a new version of herself, separate from the sanitized, all-white existence she’s led thus far. Even though the novel doesn’t go into much depth in this regard, this does suggest that part of Maddy’s coming of age will entail coming to terms with her adult body and how it comes across to others in the real world—which she can, to a degree, control by wearing a revealing suit or by choosing to wear particular colors.
Themes
