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
Paris, France. July 29, 1719. Addie is sprawled out on the marquis’s wife’s duvet eating stolen chocolate. The marquis and his wife are very social and are always out of town, so Addie frequently stays at their house. The servants have retreated to their rooms for the night, and Addie has the place to herself. She tries on some of the marquis’s wife’s dresses and then does up her hair in the mirror. She looks totally unlike herself, minus her freckles. Suddenly, the stranger is behind her. “Hello, Adeline,” he says. Adeline briskly tells him to go away. He feigns offense—it’s been a year since they last saw each other, after all.
It's been three years since the last flashback to Addie’s early years of the curse. Her lavish surroundings in this scene reflect how accustomed she’s grown to her cursed invisibility: she’s successfully found loopholes to make the most of her curse, as evidenced by the way she luxuriates on a duvet while eating sweets. Addie’s order for the darkness to leave her alone further reflects how comfortable she’s grown with her curse—perhaps, one has to worry, too comfortable.
Themes
The stranger tells Addie not to be so rude, especially on their “anniversary”—he is the only companion she will ever have, after all. Plus, he has planned to have dinner with her. Before Addie can stop him, the stranger pulls the bell, and the lady’s maid comes running into the room. Addie realizes that the stranger has bewitched the woman. The stranger tells the maid they will dine in the salon, and the maid leaves to have dinner prepared. Addie at first refuses to dine with the stranger, but she relents and follows him into the salon. The bewitched servants have prepared an elaborate meal for them, complete with Champagne. Addie is wary of partaking of the elaborate meal—after all, everything the stranger offers comes at a price. But eventually she relents and eats. The stranger seems to appreciate her attention.
The stranger’s advice to Addie to remember that he is her only permanent companion further develops the importance of human companionship as one of the novel’s central themes. To the reader, this advice should trigger warning bells, too: if the stranger is telling the truth, then present-day Addie should be more wary of whatever is going on that has allowed Henry to remember her—it’s very possible that Henry could merely be a trick the stranger is playing on Addie. This scene also further develops the stranger and Addie’s complicated, asymmetrical relationship. They are adversaries, yet here, they’re engaged in what almost seems like a romantic dinner. Perhaps this foreshadows a future romance that will develop between them.
Themes
Addie asks the stranger if he has a name. Names have “power,” she says—this is why the stranger took hers. The stranger asks what name Addie called him by when she created him in her journals—was he modeled after some real man? Addie says her stranger never had a name. She had tried for years to give him one, but no name stuck. Then she stumbled upon one that did: Luc—“As in Lucifer.” “Luc,” she tells him. The darkness—Luc—smiles, accepting his new name.
Addie’s observation that names have “power” evokes one of the novel’s central themes: that making one’s presence known to the world through self-expression is a major way that people create meaning in their lives. As such, it seems important that Addie has just given Luc a name—he’s still the more powerful of the two of them, but perhaps Addie has leveled the playing field, even just a little bit, by giving him a name that she can call him—by putting him in some kind of box.
Themes
Addie watches Luc twirl his crystal glass in his hand. In the glass, she sees the life she might have had: the one where she was forced to marry Roger, care for his children, and grow old. She’d be too tired to draw or write. She’s glad Luc hasn’t asked her if she would go back to that life—because she knows she wouldn’t.
Addie is happy that Luc hasn’t asked her if she’d go back and choose again, if given the chance, because to do so would be to acknowledge, if only indirectly, her gratitude to him. This is something that Addie, who longs to be beholden to nobody—mortal or otherwise—wants to do.
Themes
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Addie shifts her attention to the bewitched servants standing frozen in the corner of the room. Luc snaps his fingers and tells the servants to take a bottle of Champagne for themselves. Addie scolds Luc—the servants will be punished when their masters return to find them drunk. Luc retorts that the servants will also be blamed for the chocolates and clothing that Addie has stolen from the marquis’s wife’s room. This upsets Addie. When Luc, once more, urges Addie to surrender her soul to him, Addie says it was a mistake to curse her. She vows never to give in to Luc. From now on, they are at “war.”
Addie sees herself as different from Luc—as kinder and more empathetic toward others. Yet Luc, in pointing out that all of Addie’s cleverness has consequences, shows her that really, the two of them are not so different. Here, Luc suggests that Addie’s invisibility and immortality make her fundamentally less vulnerable than people like the servants, whom she unintentionally exploits and harms.
Themes
