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 approaches Rise and Shine, a coffee and pastry stall run by two sisters who remind Addie of Estele. Mel greets Addie. Addie orders a coffee and two muffins, handing Maggie, the other sister, a 10-dollar bill she found on the ground. She scrounges through her pocket for some change, trying not to touch the wooden ring. She wants to take it and throw it as far as she can, but she knows it will always find its way back into her pocket.
That Addie is still thinking of Estele 300 years later shows how much the woman meant—and still means—to her. Addie’s negative reaction to the wooden ring—the ring her father made her, which she used to love and wear around her neck—is curious. Has something happened with the ring that Addie would rather not think about? And, given the fantastical elements of Addie’s world, the reader can assume that Addie is being literal when she describes how the ring always returns to her pocket, as though by magic.
Themes
Addie grabs her order and wanders through Prospect Park. She finds a sunny patch of grass. She sits down, sips her coffee, and examines the book she took from Fred’s table: Kinder und Hausmärchen—Grimm’s Fairy Tales. She loved fairy tales when she was a child, but things are different now. Now, she sees the stories in a darker light: they’re about humans who make foolish decisions and only realize their error once it’s too late to go back.
Addie’s ominous observation that fairy tales are about fools who make mistakes and must suffer the consequences seems to reference something that happened in her own life—likely when she “signed away her soul,” though the novel has yet to explain the exact circumstances of this event. Perhaps Addie’s prayers to the gods—something she seemed to do more frequently as she grew older—led to some negative consequences for her.
Themes
