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
Standing at the podium to give her presentation, Alice looks out into the crowd and notices John, Anna, Charlie, Tom, Mary, Cathy, Dan Sullivan, and Dr. Sullivan. She touches her butterfly necklace and begins her talk.
Touching the butterfly necklace reminds Alice that this moment is one of those that confirms the continued existence of beauty in her life. She’s lost much of her identity and independence, but she still doesn’t succumb to viewing her life as tragic.
Themes
Alice tells the audience that she is there to speak with them as “an expert on Alzheimer’s disease” because she is living with it. Alice tells them that those in the early stages of dementia “feel like we are neither here nor there” and that it’s “very lonely and frustrating.” Alice says she struggles to “understand what you are saying, what [she is] thinking, and what is happening around [her],” that she is “losing [her] yesterdays” and has no control over which ones she gets to keep. Alice says she “fear[s] tomorrow” because she doesn’t know if she will lose her “me-ness” or if that is something that is “immune to the ravages of Alzheimer’s.”
This speech is Alice’s chance to give a voice to those with Alzheimer’s who might not be able to speak for themselves. In using the term “we,” she aligns herself with other Alzheimer’s patients, showing how much she’s changed her perspective since the earliest stages of her disease when she struggled to reconcile her mental image of Alzheimer’s with herself. Alice’s fear of losing her “me-ness” echoes the greatest fear that’s been looming over her since her diagnosis: the ultimate loss of her self-awareness which will render her completely dependent on her family.
Themes
Alice says that she is not “someone dying,” but is “someone living with Alzheimer’s.” She encourages early intervention by physicians and not simply writing symptoms off as depression or menopause. Alice expresses hope for a cure even though she “may never be able to retrieve what [she’s] already lost.” She pleads with the audience not to “write […] off” Alzheimer’s patients, but to talk, work with, and listen to them. Alice says she “live[s] for each day” now and assures the audience that just because she’ll forget this moment, “that doesn’t mean that today didn’t matter.” Alice receives a standing ovation and notices her family crying and smiling, including John, who has “unmistakable love in his eyes and joy in his smile.”
At the end of Alice’s speech, the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the audience gives her back a sense of success and accomplishment that has been lacking in her life since she was forced to stop teaching and lecturing at Harvard. Most important is the reaction of John, who, in that moment, recognizes Alice as he remembers her before her disease. Alice’s statement that “today” matters even though one day she’ll forget it also echoes her mother’s words about the life of the butterfly and how the shortness of its life doesn’t make it any less meaningful or beautiful.
Themes
