Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Immortalists, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate vs. Choice
Family and Shared History
Obsession
Death, Meaning, and Legacy
Surviving vs. Living
Magic, Religion, Dance, and Possibility
Summary
Analysis
Mira and Daniel meet for the first time in May 1987, though Daniel noticed her across campus a few times prior. One afternoon, Mira sits at his table in the student café while he is having lunch, despite the fact that there are many empty tables around. She begins to work, ignoring him, until Daniel finally asks her what she studies. She explains that she studies Jewish art. Daniel awkwardly tells her that he’s ancestrally Jewish. Daniel hasn’t prayed since Simon’s death, and he tells Mira that he sees value in religious tradition but isn’t religious anymore. He says that God is a way of enabling people to believe that they don’t have control in their lives, but he thinks that they have more control than they believe.
Daniel’s section of the book focuses on his belief in the idea of choice and free will rather than fate, which is immediately established here. Unlike Simon, who believed wholeheartedly in his fate and made choices based on that belief, Daniel wants to ensure that he can control his life and subvert the fortune teller’s prophecy. He views God as an extension of the misguided belief in fate, arguing that a belief in God allows people to give up their sense of control.
Themes
Mira explains that she tracks pieces of Nazi stolen art, and she talks about a Van Gogh painting that was seized by the Nazis in 1937. Afterward, it was sold to a Jewish banker in New York who fled the Holocaust. Mira says it’s remarkable, the path that the artworks sometimes take. Mira then concludes that she believes people need God for the same reason they need art: because it shows people “what’s possible.” Daniel rejects this notion, but he’s still drawn to Mira and they start dating.
Mira relates visual art to religion in the same way that Klara relates magic to religion. Using the words “what’s possible” directly calls back to Klara’s own words when she was auditioning at The Mirage—that both magic and religion make the impossible seem possible. Mira and Klara both understand art and religion simply as different modes of expanding people’s worldviews.
Themes
At Daniel and Mira’s wedding, he feels peaceful when he looks at her. That night, lying naked next to a sleeping Mira, Daniel prays, asking God for his happiness to last. Years earlier, after visiting the fortune teller, he had been ashamed at trying to know the unknowable. He didn’t want anyone to have the power over him that the fortune teller had. But now he realizes that believing in God doesn’t mean he has to stop believing in choice. He begins to think of God as a father, gently nudging him in the right direction. Years after their wedding, Daniel asks Mira if she intentionally sat beside him in the dining hall when they met. She says she knew exactly what she was doing.
At his wedding, Daniel finds a renewed faith in God, particularly because he realizes that believing in God doesn’t necessarily mean believing in fate—that he can still have free will. Instead, God simply helps explain some of the more mysterious or supernatural aspects of life. The fact that Mira confirms that she deliberately chose to sit next to Daniel when they met only affirms his worldview. It wasn’t simply a coincidence or destiny that led her there—it was her own choice.
Themes
