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 Orleans, Louisiana. May 1, 1984. Candles burn on the windowsill. Luc tells Addie they are made for each other, but Addie says she doesn’t belong to him. They are in bed together in the yellow house, and Addie realizes that she’s forgotten something important: none of this is real. Luc isn’t human, and their life together isn’t a life. She pleads with him to let her go. But Luc says a deal is a deal. Then he falters. Perhaps he could bend the rules a bit, he says—but only if Addie surrenders to him first. Addie refuses. “It’s just a word,” Luc says. But Addie knows better than this: Luc taught her, that night that they made their deal, that words make all the difference. How can she trust him now? Plus, Luc doesn’t really love her: He’s incapable of love.
With this scene, the reader finally glimpses the details of Addie and Luc’s falling-out. Addie ends things with Luc, insisting that he can’t love her because he’s not human. As a god, Luc is fundamentally invulnerable, and so this inhibits him from experiencing genuine, human love—the only love that Addie is interested in. At the same time, Addie remains wary that Luc’s supposed “love” is merely a ploy to get her to surrender to him. Increasingly, though, it matters less and less whether or not Luc truly loves Addie, because to Luc, there’s little difference between love and possession.
Themes
Luc says that he’s given Addie everything, but Addie says nothing he’s given her is real. She refuses to cry, though: she won’t let him see how he’s hurt her. To this day, Addie can’t remember how the fire began. Maybe it was the candles, or maybe it was Luc’s spite. Either way, the house on Bourbon Street burned to the ground that night. And now, once again, Addie has nothing. She pulls the wooden ring from her pocket and throws it into the flames.
Early in the novel, Addie briefly references an old leather coat—the only thing she saved from the fire in New Orleans—that she continues to carry around because it smells like “him.” Now, the reader finally understands the full context of this allusion. Still, it remains unclear whether Addie keeps the jacket to remember her love of Luc—or to remind herself not to fall for his tricks.
Themes
