Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Looking for Alibrandi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family
Identity, Freedom, and Coming of Age
The Immigrant Experience
Gossip and Appearances
Social Status and Wealth
Love and Relationships
Summary
Analysis
Josie fixes her hair in the mirror and wishes her neckline wasn’t so high. She’d asked Nonna to make a short, black, velvet dress with a “nice neckline” for this dance. Instead, the dress is green and knee-length, and it seems to choke Josie’s neck. Mama moans about Josie’s Doc Martens and begs her to put on some flats. Josie whines that boys aren’t going to ask her to dance as the doorbell rings. Mama hugs Josie and tells her to be home at midnight. There will students from St. Martha’s, St. Anthony’s, Cook High, and a coed Presbyterian school at the dance.
Even as Josie is stepping out on her own as she prepares for the regional dance, she can’t escape Mama and Nonna’s ideas of how she should dress and act. This is why she ends up in Nonna’s idea of a nice dress instead of her own—and why she does go on to change out her boots for some flats. This starts to show that even as Josie tries to assert her identity, she’ll still have to contend with her family’s rigid expectations.
Themes
As Josie gets in Sera’s car, Anna compliments her dress. Sera says the neckline is too high and Lee asks what happened to the Doc Martens. Josie says Mama is “introducing [her] to individuality.” When they get to the town hall, Josie takes in everyone’s varied outfits and looks for John, begging God for John to ask her to dance. But instead, John is with Poison Ivy. Josie’s cousin Robert comes up behind Josie, surprises her, and tells her she looks gorgeous. Boys ask Lee and Sera to dance right as the music starts. Anna and Josie stand nervously until Jacob Coote and a tall boy approach. The tall boy asks Anna to dance, and Jacob asks Josie. Josie looks everywhere but at Jacob as they dance to song after song.
While Mama seems to conceptualize wearing flats instead of Doc Martens as “individuality,” Josie isn’t so sure—flats, to her, seem to be akin to giving into the older generations’ ideas of how she should dress. But as Josie defends her choices to her friends, it shows that she still respects Mama and her requests—it’s telling that she’s not groaning about the flats, or sneaking the Doc Martens out the door to change after she left the house.
Themes
Eventually, Josie starts to sneakily study Jacob. He has green eyes and, Josie thinks, Mama would love him—he’s “the epitome of individuality.” She wonders what he’s doing here; he’s not the sort to come to dances like this. He catches her eye and says he was forced to come to set a good example. After the song ends, Josie excuses herself and goes to the bathroom. Sera follows and teases Josie about marrying Jacob, while Anna bursts in and says she’s in love. Poison Ivy comes in to fix her immaculate blond bob, and another girl asks if she and John are together since they’d be such a good match. Ivy insists they’re just friends but gives Josie a dirty look.
As Josie thinks that Jacob isn’t the sort to come to a dance like this, she shows again that she has a tendency to judge people based on superficial, external factors. Indeed, though Josie seems to genuinely enjoy dancing with Jacob and even seems attracted to him, suggesting that he’s not the sort to come to the dance reads as a way for Josie to tell herself that she and Jacob don’t belong together. As the other girl in the bathroom notes, though, John and Ivy belong together—and by her logic, Josie doesn’t belong with John. She’s too different.
Themes
Josie and her friends return to the hall and though Josie doesn’t dance with Jacob again, she dances with boys the entire rest of the night. When the dance ends at 11:30, everyone else arranges to go for pizza. But Josie grabs Robert and tells him she needs to head home. Sera gripes that Mama is too concerned about gossip as Jacob walks up and offers to take Josie home. To spite Sera, Josie follows Jacob (this will stir up a lot of gossip). Jacob and Josie run into Poison Ivy and John in the parking lot. They politely discuss the dance and the boys seem to size each other up.
The simple fact that Josie spends the night dancing with various boys suggests she’s not as unpopular as she fears she is; her sense of self may be somewhat warped. Choosing to go with Jacob to spite Sera is a way for Josie to assert her independence and insist that she doesn’t care about what people say about her. However, the tone Josie uses to describe her choice suggests she actually does care.
Themes
Get the entire Looking for Alibrandi LitChart as a printable PDF.
As Ivy gets in the car, John takes Josie’s hand and says he meant to ask her to dance but didn’t have the opportunity. He offers to take Josie for coffee, but Josie refuses and runs after Jacob, who she realizes has walked away. Jacob snarls, asks if Josie likes John, and says John is embarrassingly trendy. When Josie asks if Jacob’s mother taught him manners, Jacob reveals that his mother is dead. Josie stops in embarrassment, apologizes, and follows him across the street. He asks Josie for her name, which shocks her—they danced together and he bullied her when they were kids.
It's no doubt particularly uncomfortable for Josie when Jacob makes fun of how “trendy” John is because Josie is so in love with John. Getting proof that not everyone sees John as an ideal partner shows Josie just how different her perception of the world compared to Jacob (Jacob makes it seem as though unlike Josie, he has no dreams of becoming like John and Ivy). In this sense, Jacob seems far more self-assured.
Themes
Jacob stops in front of a line of cars and asks Josie to guess which one is his. She’s cold in her dress and groans that the van is probably his—but Jacob stops next to a motorcycle. Josie shakes her head, suggests they get a taxi, and says that Mama will murder her, but Jacob shoves a helmet onto her head. Josie makes Jacob turn around while she pulls her dress up so she can climb onto the bike. As Jacob starts the motorcycle, Josie screams and doesn’t stop for five minutes. She’s terrified to be so exposed on the motorcycle, especially when a carful of guys catcall her at a stoplight.
Assuming that Jacob drives the van shows again how normal it is for Josie to make assumptions. And she makes it very clear here that she cares what other people think—from Mama to random guys Jacob passes in traffic. Getting on a boy’s motorcycle doesn’t seem like something Josie would normally do—in part because of the gossip this would attract—but in order to spite Sera, Josie feels like she has no choice.
Themes
Josie taps Jacob and asks him to stop a street before hers. She stumbles off the motorcycle, adjusts her dress, and allows him to walk her to her door. Jacob shares that his mother died of cancer five years ago. Josie says she’d die if Mama died, but Jacob says you actually don’t die. Josie then says she’d run away so she didn’t have to think about anything bad. Jacob points out that then she’d be far away from the people she loves—and her problems won’t have gone away.
Even though Josie and Jacob both express love for their mothers, Jacob seems to have a healthier relationship with his family. There’s no telling yet what his relationship with his living family members are like, but he nevertheless implies that his family will be there to support him during hard times—something that Josie hasn’t yet expressed or realized yet.
Themes
When they stop in front of Josie’s house, Jacob says they’re the same: they’re both middle class; Josie’s just a “snob” who goes to a fancy school. Josie notes that she’s there on a scholarship, but Jacob points out that without it, she’d be at Cook High like him. Josie says she’d be at a middle-class Catholic school, and she wouldn’t be ashamed. Jacob leans in to kiss her, but Josie leans away. Jacob mutters that Josie isn’t his type anyway.
Josie doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with being wealthy. But the way she reacts to being called a “snob” suggests she does see something wrong with aspiring to be wealthy—even though that’s indeed her aspiration—and looking down on people who are on the same economic level as her. She still, to some degree, looks down on Jacob and other middle-class people, but she’s ashamed of this fact.
Themes
