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
Fécamp, France. July 29, 1778. It’s crazy that Addie might have gone her whole life without seeing the ocean. Now, though, Addie is walking along the cliffs, listening to the crash of waves, and smelling the salt of the ocean. Addie’s world used to be Villon—but now, it’s so much bigger. Addie has been in Fécamp for about a week now. The situation in Paris is growing increasingly dire: food shortages are at their worst, and political tensions are rising. Addie really should just sail across the ocean. But something always stops her. Today that something is the impending storm. Addie reads The Tempest as she considers the stormy weather.
Addie’s allusion to the brewing political tensions in Paris refers to the French Revolution, a period of societal change in France that was driven by principles of liberal democracy and born of dissatisfaction with France’s rampant economic inequality and an out-of-touch ruling elite. Addie’s ability to look in wonder out at the ocean despite the looming threat of chaos reinforces the optimism and zest for life that has driven Addie to persevere in the face of political instability and an uncertain future; she can see the calm before and after the storm, so to speak, and this motivates her to push forward.
Themes
“Leave not a rack behind—” Addie reads—and then a voice behind her completes the line: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” It’s Luc. Addie is not happy to see him; she’s still upset about what he did to her in Villon, though they’ve seen each other a handful of times since then. Luc tells Addie that he was there when Shakespeare wrote that verse—he wanted “a patron,” and Luc made a deal with him.
This line of The Tempest, spoken by Prospero, gets at the unknowable, dreamlike nature of life. Within the context of the novel, the line foregrounds the notion that ideas (and by extension, art and creativity and self-expression) are more central to meaning than memory.
Themes
Luc instructs Addie to walk with him, and she reluctantly obliges. They walk along the coast until they reach a church. Addie’s clothes are soaked through from the pouring rain, so she walks through the door that Luc opens for her. Addie prayed in a church growing up, and she’s never understood how being inside a church makes people feel closer to God. Now, she remarks aloud how easily her parents believed in God. She, however, was never able to believe in things she couldn’t see with her own eyes.
Addie’s thoughts about religion resonate with the book’s broader exploration of the difference between ideas and memories. She’s asking if the physical presence of a church makes people feel closer to God—or if it’s the more elusive idea of faith that creates this feeling.
Themes
Luc wonders if Addie ever wishes she’d prayed to God instead of Luc. Addie has, but she doesn’t tell Luc this. Luc explains that the main difference between himself and God is that he, unlike God, will always answer Addie’s calls.
Luc is essentially asking Addie if the certainty that he’ll always answer her prayers has been worth the suffering that her deal with Luc has caused her. The risk of dealing with the Christian God, by contrast, is far less—but so is the reward.
Themes
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With this, a light emerges from Luc’s open palm, and an orb—a soul—takes shape. Addie has always thought a soul would be a grand, substantial thing, but this orb is so small. Still, Addie can’t take her eyes off the orb, and she tries to reach for it—but Luc pulls back his hand before she can touch it. Luc says that looks can be deceiving—and at this, the orb loses its light and turns into Addie’s wooden ring. If Addie really wants to know “the truth,” Luc says, he can show her—but she has to surrender herself to him. Addie can see that Luc is trying to tempt her to give up, and she tells him she’d prefer to wait and “wonder.”
With each time Addie turns down Luc’s urgings to surrender to him, Luc develops new strategies to tempt Addie to give up and relinquish her soul. Here, he seems to have realized that no amount of suffering or loneliness will be enough to tempt Addie, so he appeals to her thirst for knowledge, offering the temptation of “the truth” if she gives in to him. But Addie, once more, shows Luc that he has underestimated and misunderstood her, suggesting that it’s not knowledge that she prizes, but the quest for it: the experience of learning and understanding might necessitate uncertainty and error, but at least to Addie, this uncertainty—this sustained “wonder”—is what makes life worthwhile.
Themes
