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Chapter 50
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Spectacular Things, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sacrifice and Love
Dreams, Ambition, and Meaning
Love and Loss
Competition vs. Teamwork
Community
Summary
Analysis
The following Valentine’s Day, Mia thinks that she and Oliver need to change their approach to fertility. They’ve been trying to have a baby for close to two years now, and their efforts are beginning to take an emotional toll. For Valentine’s Day, Mia buys alcohol, drugs, and foods that are antithetical to the idea of pregnancy and brings them home to Oliver. Mia then says that they should stop trying to have a baby and should instead focus on enjoying the benefits of not having a child for the time being. Oliver declines the drugs, but he agrees that Mia’s plan is a good idea. Mia thinks that taking some of the pressure off of having a kid might actually make it easier for them to get pregnant.
This passage again implicitly compares and contrasts Mia and Cricket’s lives. While Cricket is working extraordinarily hard to try and achieve her dream of making the U.S. National Team, this passage suggests that Mia is also experiencing her own hardships, including struggling with fertility. Again, the novel puts those two struggles in conversation with one another to suggest that while Cricket’s pursuits receive more attention, that doesn’t make those pursuits inherently more laudable, difficult, or important than Mia’s.
Themes
