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Book 4, Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tell Me Everything, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling, Empathy, and Meaning
Marriage and Betrayal
Understanding vs. Division
Family, Inheritance, and Cyclical Abuse
Growth and Tenacity
Summary
Analysis
Three weeks after Larry gets hit by the car, he is deemed well enough to return home, so he goes back to his apartment and Jim moves into the spare room. Jim continues to cry, apologizing to Larry for everything being from inattentive to sending him to summer camp. Larry assures Jim that there are no hard feelings. Larry even jokes that he “should have almost died sooner.”
Just as Bob reconsiders his own relative “luck” in life because of the Beach family’s tragedy, Larry’s near-death experience seems to recontextualize his entire relationship with his father—at least temporarily.
Themes
Eventually, Jim feels that he needs to tell Larry about the worst thing he has ever done: he allowed Bob to take the blame for their father’s death. Jim tells his son that he was actually the one playing with the gearshift and that he confessed all of this to Bob 15 years ago. “Dad, that’s evil,” Larry replies. “You’ve been evil your whole life.” Larry asks Jim to move out of his spare room and tells his dad that he never wants to speak to him again.
