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
Venice, Italy. July 29, 1806. Addie wakes up wrapped in silk sheets. Venice is so much hotter than Paris, and the open window offers little relief from the oppressive heat. Matteo sits at the foot of the bed. Addie finds that he’s just as beautiful now as he was last night. Mornings are usually awkward for her, but Matteo is calm. Addie realizes he’s sketching her, but she doesn’t cover herself. She’s had years to grow comfortable in her skin.
This scene explains the origins of one of the artworks that Sam’s proposed thesis centered around. It also reinforces how centrally art and artists have figured in Addie’s life and quest to reclaim some of visibility she lost when she made her deal with Luc.
Themes
Addie asks Matteo to see his work. He says he’s not finished yet but hands her the pad anyway. The figure Matteo has drawn is her, but her face is abstract and imprecise. When she removes her hand from the page, she finds that she has not smeared the charcoal, though she has charcoal on her thumb. Addie wishes she could take the sketch with her. If Matteo keeps it, he will forget whom he drew, but not the physical drawing. Yet the image will remain—“It will be real.”
Addie, in this section, reaffirms what Luc told her earlier in the novel about the power of idea over memory. Though Matteo will forget Addie the moment she leaves the room, his drawing of her—his visual rendering of the idea of her—will remain and “be real.” That charcoal from the drawing has smeared onto Addie’s hand—even as invisible Addie remains incapable of smudging the drawing itself—reaffirms the strength of ideas over memories.
Themes
Later that night, after Addie has left Matteo, she stands on a bridge over the canal and thinks about what Luc said after he got her kicked out of Geoffrin’s salon: “Ideas are wilder than memories.” Luc had meant this to hurt her, but she finds the idea full of possibility now. Maybe ideas are a new way she can work around the constraints of her curse.
