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Part 3, Chapter 24
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Forty Rules of Love, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Spirituality
Connections Across Distance and Time
Appearances vs. Reality
Storytelling and Truth
Summary
Analysis
Ella. Northampton, June 17, 2008. Ella asked Aziz for more details about his life, so he continues in a new email. After Margot’s death, Aziz explains, he turned to addictions and night clubs for comfort. Sometimes while he was high, he made elaborate suicide plans. He lost his job, his friends, and the apartment he once lived in with Margot. Eventually, he hit rock bottom. It was 1977, and he decided he had to get rid of every possession of Margot’s he still had.
Aziz’s period of addiction shows how in times of distress people often turn to material solutions. On the whole, the book suggests that these are less satisfying than seeking spiritual solutions that go closer to the root of the matter. Aziz needed to hit rock bottom before he could change, reflecting how Ella herself feels like she is reaching a low point in her married life.
Active
Themes
Aziz managed to get job at a travel magazine that took him on a photography trip to north Africa. He wanted to enter Mecca and Medina, but due to him not being Muslim, he needed a local contact. An anthropologist friend recommended some Sufi brotherhoods for Aziz to check out. Aziz was unfamiliar with Sufism at the time. He never did make it to Mecca or Medina because life took him off in a different and stranger direction.
Active
Themes
