Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory and Meaning
Love and Vulnerability
Freedom
Art, Creativity, and Expression
Wonder and Knowledge
Summary
Analysis
New York City. March 10, 2014. Addie leaves the park and walks to a nearby theater, lying to a teenage employee that she’s left her purse inside to get inside. Addie has seen many inventions emerge over the centuries, but movies are one of her favorites. With movies, “the world falls away[.]”
That Addie enjoys movies above other modern inventions stresses the importance she—and the novel—places on art, creativity, and expression.
Themes
It’s nearly 6:00 by the time Addie leaves the theater. The sun is setting. Addie heads toward the Alloway in Brooklyn. It’s dark by the time she reaches the dive bar. She bums a cigarette off someone outside to avoid walking through another doorway. She imagines the scene that plays out every night she comes here: inside, a man will offer to buy her a drink. They’ll chat until he excuses himself to take a call. He’ll promise to return, but he won’t.
Now that the reader knows how the darkness has cursed Addie—by making other people forget her immediately upon meeting her—this scene makes more sense. Addie knows how everything will play out because she’s experienced everything before; meanwhile, the rest of the world, enchanted by the darkness’s power, doesn’t remember her. This scene also hints at what’s worst about Addie’s curse: it’s terribly lonely being someone whom others forget immediately.
Themes
Addie will wait for Toby to come onstage. He’ll flash a shy smile at the audience. Then Toby will play, and his music will send Addie back to his place, where they wrote the song together. But now, the song has lyrics: “It is becoming his.” The song will end, and later, Toby will order a drink at the bar. He’ll see Addie and smile. Addie will let herself hope, for a moment, that this will be the time he remembers. But it won’t be. Now, a man holding open the door for Addie interrupts her daydream. “You coming in?” he asks her. “Not tonight,” Addie replies.
This section reveals another negative consequence of Addie’s curse: she can’t leave a mark on the world. Whereas Toby can, through the notes he salvages of his and Addie’s songwriting sessions, make their song “becom[e] his,” Addie, who can’t physically be remembered, can never lay claim to their song. Her inability to create and immortalize herself is another way in which her curse impacts her negatively. It renders her invisible—not only to other people, but to history and culture in a broader sense.
Themes
