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
Le Mans, France. July 31, 1714. Addie finally reaches Le Mans; it’s been 10 years since she was here, and she doesn’t know where to go. Addie doesn’t recognize anything and realizes it was foolish to think that things would remain unchanged. Then she spots a tavern at the edge of the village square. A man dismounts his horse outside the tavern and hands the reins to the stable hand before heading inside. Addie eyes the sacks of grain thrown across the horse’s back and heads over.
Little by little, Addie comes to terms with how poorly thought-out her deal with the darkness was. She hasn’t even considered the smallest of details, like how Le Mans might have changed in the past 10 years since she was there with her father. Still, Addie gets over her disorientation almost immediately, seemingly making a plan to steal the sack of grain, and this shows that she’s determined to make use of the new freedom her curse has given her, however imperfect or badly planned that freedom may be.
Themes
In a stall toward the back of the barn, Addie finds a heavy riding coat and puts it on. The stable hand approaches her and demands to know what she’s doing. She lies and says she’s here for her father’s horse, but she unwittingly claims that the stable hand’s horse is her father’s horse, and the stable hand catches her in her lie. Addie tries to flee, but the stable hand catches her before she can escape. A second man enters, and the stable hand says Addie is a thief. The second man draws his knife from his belt and points it at Addie. Then he pushes Addie into the other man’s knife. Pain shoots through Addie’s shoulder, and her mind goes blank. She jumps behind a barrel and hides there, watching as the men go from angry and bickering to calm and confused: they’ve forgotten her.
Just as Addie seems to be getting the hang of her new, invisible life, a new obstacle gets in her way. Interestingly, a lot of the things that held Addie back in her old, non-cursed life were related to her gender, as her society grants women little power outside of the domestic sphere. Cruelly, though Addie now has the power of immortality on her side, she must first be subjected to the whims of men who mean her harm before their forgetting her lets her flee unscathed.
Themes
Addie flees the stable and decides to leave Le Mans. As she walks, the sharp pain in her shoulder fades, and the wound heals. Addie realizes that the stranger has held up his end of their deal: he has allowed her to live. She’s simultaneously amazed and horrified at this. Addie starts to lose faith in herself, but then she remembers something Estele once told her: if you want to walk to the end of the earth, you must do it “One step at a time.” So, this is what Addie will do. She will walk to Paris—one step at a time.
Addie’s healed shoulder both amazes and horrifies her because it demonstrates the stranger’s power—and the way he’s willing to use it to hurt and toy with Addie. It shows her that though the stranger has given her the immortality she wanted, he has no qualms about letting her suffer physically for it. Yet, Addie’s decision to look to Estele, someone who has always represented freedom to Addie, rather than give in to misery, shows that she’s willing to endure the stranger’s cruelty and show him that she is stronger than he thinks she is: even if she must do this “One step at a time.”
Themes
