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. September 5, 2013. Henry returns to his apartment after drinking with Bea and Robbie. He takes a beer from the fridge and starts to box up Tabitha’s belongings. He finishes the first beer and starts a second. Then he heads to the Merchant, which is busy as usual. Mark, a man in his 50s, is tending bar. Normally, it takes forever for Mark to get to Henry, but tonight, Mark walks right over. Then he pours Henry a shot of tequila on the house. Henry initially assumes that Mark has noticed how awful Henry looks and is pitying him, but Mark’s eyes have a “strange and subtle light” to them. Henry is totally confused. He remembers how Vanessa acted that morning at the coffee shop. Then he looks down at the watch on his wrist. He realizes then that the watch—and the deal he made—are real.
Just as Addie did so many years before, Henry spends the early days of his deal/curse coming to understand the rules of his new, post-deal world. Unlike Addie, Henry appears to assess his surroundings more positively; he’s perplexed by the attention that everyone pays him, but he’s not put off by the “strange and subtle light” that fills the eyes of everyone who looks at him. It’s yet to sink in that the coerced nature of everyone’s attention degrades and devalues that attention.
Themes
A man interrupts Henry’s musings to offer Henry a white powder. Henry was 12 the first time he got high on marijuana, and in the years since, he’s tried various pills—anything to dull the pain of existing. Henry used to want to be happy, but with Tabitha gone now, all he wants is to feel good. So, Henry accepts the man’s white powder. The man calls Henry “perfect,” and then Henry feels dizzy and runs to sit against a wall to steady himself.
This scene helps contextualize Henry’s inability to see past the superficial aspects of his new, post-deal life: he’s still grieving from his recent breakup and is only interested in feeling good. Thus, he’s unable to properly comprehend what’s wrong with accepting strangers’ affection toward him, even if that affection is coerced and insincere.
Themes
A girl named Lucia and a boy named Benji approach Henry. Henry notices that both have an intense longing in their eyes. Nobody has looked at Henry this way before—not on a first date, and not even during sex. Lucia and Benji laugh, and Henry realizes they are trying to ask him to participate in a threesome. He goes home with them.
This scene reaffirms Henry’s reasons for not being more initially skeptical of his curse/deal with Luc: he’s tired of being vulnerable and doesn’t care if other people’s sudden desire for him is fake. He just wants to feel good. Like Addie, Henry’s single-minded pursuit of what he wants most—love—blinds him to the reality that his deal with Luc is not without its tradeoffs.
Themes
