Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Still Alice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ambition and Success
Loss of Identity
Illness, Marriage, and Family
Alzheimer’s, Quality of Life, and Happiness
Summary
Analysis
In July, Alice and John go to their home in Chatham Cape, leaving the hustle and bustle of their professional lives back in Cambridge. Alice knows that John has left somewhere but can’t remember where, so she walks through the house and thinks. Typically, Alice would be completely relaxed and enjoying her free time, but this year she finds she is struggling. The rigid schedule she followed at Harvard had “provided a structure […] that was familiar and comforting.” Without this schedule, she loses track of the time and day, and sleeps too much.
Ironically, this vacation to get away from stress creates a new one: without a consistent schedule to help keep her oriented, Alice enters a rapid decline. Furthermore, at their beach house Alice lacks the same level of mental stimulation she had back at Cambridge. This stimulation likely helped keep some neurons alive, and without it, these neurons die quicker.
Themes
Alice leaves a note for John saying she’s on the beach and heads out. Standing in front of the ocean, Alice spontaneously removes her clothes and wades into the water. As she swims, her Alzheimer’s bracelet catches the moonlight and she finds herself thinking about her mother’s butterfly necklace, her suicide plan, and all the books she wanted to read. She thinks about Edna Pontellier and Virginia Woolf and how they had also chosen to die by drowning. However, “in this moment, she didn’t feel desperate. She felt alive and happy.” She sees John on the beach, and, without a word, he removes his clothes and joins her in the water.
Both Edna Pontellier and Virginia Woolf died by drowning themselves. More importantly, they committed suicide when they felt trapped—Virginia by the sense of an oncoming depressive episode (something she struggled with all of her life) and Edna by the knowledge that the society she lived in would never let her live her life as an independent woman. These women mirror Alice’s own feelings of impending doom and the loss of her independence, success, and lifestyle. However, Alice finds happiness in this moment because she also has the knowledge that she can make that choice for herself when she wants to, before her life becomes too tragic.
Themes
John is preparing to leave for a few days and Alice asks him to remind her when: he will leave Monday, but on Sunday night Lydia will fly in. Lydia has been cast in a play at the local Chatham theater and so will stay for the summer. John asks Alice if she’s ready to run and she says she just needs to go grab a jacket. Inside, Alice gets distracted by her book and picks it up. When she runs into John, he reminds her about their run. Alice says she has to go to the bathroom first, but she becomes disoriented and can’t find it. John finds her just as she wets herself. Embarrassed, Alice starts crying and John comforts her just as “she’d seen him calm their children.”
Alice gets lost in her own summer home, which shows that more of her long-term memory is being impaired by her disease. Furthermore, she loses control of her own body and wets herself. When John finds her in this situation, she knows it also means that she can no longer hide the extent of her vulnerability from him. John comforts her like she is a child, which sends the message that this is how he sees her now: she is childlike and dependent, nothing like the capable woman he’s known as his wife.
Themes
When Lydia comes, John gives her detailed instructions for how to care for Alice, and Alice notes that this is reminiscent of leaving a babysitter instructions and realizes that “[n]ow she needed to be watched. By her own daughter.”
John’s instructions to Lydia for how to care for Alice is a confirmation of some of Alice’s worst fears when she first got her diagnosis: she is no longer capable of looking after herself like a healthy adult and must be taken care of by her own children.
Themes
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On their first night together, Alice and Lydia take a walk on the beach after dinner at a local restaurant. While they walk, Alice apologizes for missing Lydia’s last play. Lydia tells her it’s okay because she “know[s] it was because of Dad this time.” Lydia asks if John has gone to this conference to “find a better treatment there” and Alice tells her that’s what he’s looking for, but that she doesn’t think he’ll find one.
Alice’s lack of faith that John will be able to find someone who can help Alice at the conference he’s at shows that she, too, has given up all hope of being able to get better and has accepted the inevitable mental decline that will soon come. Alice’s apology for missing Lydia’s play and Lydia’s answer that she knows it wasn’t Alice’s fault shows that Lydia is beginning to understand her mother better and is even moving on from the disappointment she felt at Alice not attending her first play.
Themes
Back home, Alice is getting ready for bed and thinking about her new-found ability to “recognize the difference between days that would be fraught with difficulties […] and days that her Alzheimer’s would lie silent and not interfere.” Alice asks Lydia when John will be home and then when Anne will be home. Confused, Lydia tells Alice that Anna is in Boston, but Alice says she’s asking about Anne. Lydia is forced to tell Alice that Anne had died years ago. This takes Alice by surprise and she starts crying. John comes home and asks what happened, so Lydia explains that Alice “thinks [Anne and her mother] just died.” Alice becomes mad at John, believing that he’s been keeping this from her.
This event is the first time Alice loses such track of time and her life history that she confuses her past with her present: she has forgotten Anne’s death and the weight of it that she’s carried with her for decades. Alice’s anger at John over this is due in part to her perception that he only didn’t tell her because he didn’t think she was strong enough to handle the news, reflecting her earlier determination to never show weakness in front of him.
Themes
