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. July 30, 2014. The black car drives through Manhattan, and Luc and Addie sit in silence. He speaks first, recalling the opera in Munich—the complete “wonder” with which Addie looked at the performers on stage. It was then that he knew he’d never win. Addie wants to relish Luc’s admission of defeat, but she doesn’t trust him. Finally, the car pulls to a stop outside their destination: Le Coucou, a French restaurant in SoHo. They step inside, and a host leads them to their table. A server opens a bottle of merlot, and Luc toasts to Adeline. Plates begin to arrive at their table: rabbit terrine, and foie gras, and halibut. The food is amazing, but Addie feels guilty when she sees the glassy-eyed waitstaff standing helplessly to the side. She hates how unashamed Luc is about his power.
Taken at face value, Luc’s observation of Addie’s sustained “wonder” about the world and zest for life is a gesture of loving admiration. On the other hand—and as Addie suspects—Luc’s observation is little more than another calculated attempt to manipulate her—to trick her into letting her guard down so that he can control and defeat her. With this, Addie and Luc’s quasi-romance continues to explore the relationship between love, power, and control.
Themes
Luc asks Addie if she’s missed him. She has: over the past 300 years, Luc has been the only stable thing in her life. At first, Addie thinks that Luc is just playing with her. But then his voice softens, and he tells Addie that he thought about her all the time. Addie asks if anything between them has been real—he himself has stated that he is “not capable of love.” If Luc really loved her, she insists, he’d let her go. Luc argues that this doesn’t make any sense—that “Love is selfish.” Addie argues that Luc is mistaking love for “possession.” Luc doesn’t see the difference. Addie pleads with Luc to free Henry—for her. Luc gets angry at Addie for bringing Henry into their special evening together. He turns everything to ash, and then he dashes out of the restaurant.
Luc and Addie’s fundamentally different ideas about love raise big questions about the relationship between love, power, and vulnerability. Luc is suggesting that love is, at its core, a power struggle: a desire and challenge to possess another person completely. Addie, on the other hand, suggests that the opposite is true: that to love a person is to give up some of one’s own power and control in order to be emotionally vulnerable with a lover—and to trust that that one’s lover is reciprocating this act of vulnerability. Addie believes that Luc can’t love her because his feelings for her are fundamentally “selfish” and rooted in a desire to control her rather than to be vulnerable with her.
Themes
