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 15, 2014. Addie leads Henry to a steel door covered in old posters. “Jupiter,” she says to a seemingly loitering man, who opens the door, exposing a hidden set of stairs. Addie explains that they’re at the Fourth Rail, which is in one of the subway system’s abandoned tunnels. They descend many staircases until they hear music in the distance. Then they round the corner, and the whole tunnel shakes with the pulse of live electronic music. Bartenders pour drinks in another corner of the tunnel. Addie found this tunnel years ago and showed it to a musician looking to open a venue. They planned out the whole thing. Then six months later, she found the guy guarding the door, the logo she and the musician had designed, and realized that her plans had become reality.
Addie’s past with the musician is part of a broader trend of Addie associating with musicians and artists. And just as her time with Toby (the rising musician whose gigs she recalls attending earlier in the novel) generates a song they’ve composed together, her time with this other musician has led to the creation of the Fourth Rail, another way in which she’s managed to leave her mark on the world, albeit indirectly. Once more, the novel suggests that there’s more to a person than their basic identity—a person’s life’s meaning is also a product of the ideas they create and share with others, and art (and music, and other creative pursuits) are some mediums through which people can transmit those ideas.
Themes
Addie orders vodkas for Henry and herself. They drink and move to the music. Addie watches Henry. At first, he looks incredibly sad—the way he’d looked when he told her about losing time—but then the sadness passes, and Henry looks at Addie and smiles.
Henry is normally so anxious about wasting his life away, but this shared experience with Addie washes away that anxiety, suggesting the meaningful and even restorative qualities of human connection.
Themes
Henry and Addie return to the surface, and the crisp March air refreshes them. Addie hears Henry laugh for the first time. Then there’s a crack of thunder, and it begins to pour. Henry turns to Addie, and Addie sees how “Young” and “Human” he is—and in this moment, he couldn’t look less like Luc. Addie pulls Henry close, and they kiss.
Addie describes Henry as “Young” and “Human,” especially as compared to Luc. She was attracted to Remy so many years before for similar reasons. She seems to find meaning in his human vulnerability, something that Luc, as a god, lacks.
Themes
Addie and Henry take a train back to his apartment and have sex. With Luc, she was always “His Adeline.” But now, she’s Addie. Addie pleads with Henry to say her name again, and he does. Henry’s body isn’t made for hers the way Luc’s is, but it’s better this way: Henry “is real, and kind, and human, and he remembers.”
As a vulnerable mortal, Henry no more possesses Addie than she possesses him, and though things aren’t perfect with them physically, there is something beautiful in this vulnerable imperfection; it’s what makes their connection so meaningful—and, by contrast, what makes Addie’s connection with Luc so devoid of meaning.
Themes
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