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Chapter 28
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Friends, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Friendship
The Value of Art
Loss and Grief
Substance Abuse
Summary
Analysis
The next time the train stops, Louisa slips away on the platform, leaving The One of the Sea back with Ted. He is asleep, and her plan is to leave the painting with him and disappear, because he’ll never accept the painting otherwise. She hears Fish’s voice in her head, giving her advice on how to disappear. Fish’s trick is to be slippery, like soap. But as Louisa is slipping through the ticket barrier, she doesn’t notice the two men nearby.
Louisa leaves the painting behind in part because she doesn’t want to accept the responsibility of owning something so valuable. While she has had to disappear to survive in the past, she now has a chance to become closer to Ted but runs away from it. The instincts that used to serve her well now hold her back.
Active
Themes
