Addie’s wooden ring symbolizes Addie’s deal with Luc and everything the deal has forced her to give up. Running through the woods to escape her wedding to Roger, Addie prays to the gods to help her. Luc answers her prayer, and she offers him the wooden ring in exchange for his help. Luc laughs at Addie, explaining that he doesn’t “deal in trinkets” and will accept no less than Addie’s soul as payment for helping her. Addie at first believes that Luc has destroyed the ring he rejected. Addie associates the ring with her father, who made it for her when she was born. In light of this, Addie’s initial loss of the ring foreshadows the love and human connection that Addie will give up in exchange for her freedom.
Nearly a century after Luc grants Addie her immortality, though, Luc returns the ring to Addie. Like Addie, the ring remains just as unmarked and unchanging as it was the day Addie made her deal with Luc. In this way, it represents the positive side of Addie’s curse: the way the curse has allowed her to avoid aging, death, and decay. But the ring’s supernatural immutability also torments Addie, reminding her of the supernatural power that Luc has over the ring—and over her, too. Once more, then, the ring reflects the devastating cost of Addie’s freedom. Indeed, upon returning the ring to Addie, Luc explains that if Addie wants to summon him—that is, if she’s finally ready to surrender her soul to him—she need only put on the ring, and he’ll be there. But Addie refuses to wear the ring, even when her situation becomes dire or when loneliness threatens to overwhelm her. There’s nothing that Addie wants less than Luc’s help—or to give Luc the satisfaction that she needs his help. And so, the ring that once represented the love and family that Addie gave up in exchange for her freedom now represents the new constraints that freedom has placed on her: being beholden to Luc. Centuries of immortality and being forgotten teach Addie that her freedom comes at a devastating cost—that total freedom means total loneliness, and that liberating herself from Villon’s oppressive social norms has only freed her to become the victim of an even more monstrous oppressor in Luc. Her wooden ring underscores this difficult lesson.
Addie’s Wooden Ring Quotes in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
“I can show you,” he purrs, letting the light settle in his palm. “Say the word, and I will lay your own soul bare before you. Surrender, and I promise, the last thing you see will be the truth.”
There it is again.
One time salt, and the next honey, and each designed to cover poison. Addie looks at the ring, lets herself linger on it one last time, and then forces her gaze up past the light to meet the dark.
“You know,” she says, “I think I’d rather live and wonder.”
“Put it on, and I will come.” Luc leans back in his chair, the night breeze blowing through those raven curls. “There,” he says. “Now we are even.”
Addie’s Wooden Ring Symbol Timeline in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
