The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

by

V. E. Schwab

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue makes teaching easy.
Themes and Colors
Memory and Meaning  Theme Icon
Love and Vulnerability   Theme Icon
Freedom  Theme Icon
Art, Creativity, and Expression  Theme Icon
Wonder and Knowledge  Theme Icon
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.
Wonder and Knowledge  Theme Icon

When Luc gives Addie immortality in exchange for her soul, he means to trick and trap her. Under their agreement, Addie only has to surrender her soul when she no longer finds immortal life fulfilling and enjoyable. Addie’s invisibility, an unintended price she must pay in exchange for her immorality, is meant to fill her daily existence with enough pain, suffering, and loneliness to expedite Addie’s decision to give up on life and surrender her soul to Luc. Initially, Luc doubts that Addie will last one year before she is too overburdened by misery and meaninglessness to continue living. But Luc underestimates the degree to which Addie’s sense of wonder and curiosity about the world outweighs the negative consequences of her invisibility. Addie’s invisibility makes her life unbearable at times: it prevents her from developing meaningful relationships with others, denies her the right to her name and history, and forces her to watch her loved ones grow old and die. Yet, despite the misery that Addie endures as a consequence of her immortality, she never loses sight of all the good that she has gained through immortality, and she remains unwaveringly invested in life. Addie’s undying curiosity and thirst for knowledge, truth, and discovery propelled her to make a deal with Luc in the first place, and they also sustain her when her life gets tough. Her early days in Paris may be dominated by starvation, poverty, and loneliness, but it is also during these days that she first sees an elephant and sips fine Champagne. When Henry takes Addie to Grand Central Station in 2014 and shows her how the precise bends of an arch create a whispering gallery, she remarks to herself, “Three hundred years, and there are still new things to learn.” The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue suggests that a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world and a thirst for knowledge are essential to maintaining a life filled with meaning, direction, and purpose.

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Wonder and Knowledge ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Wonder and Knowledge appears in each part of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Wonder and Knowledge Quotes in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Below you will find the important quotes in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue related to the theme of Wonder and Knowledge .
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

She hates this part. She shouldn’t have lingered. Should have been out of sight as well as out of mind, but there’s always that nagging hope that this time, it will be different, that this time, they will remember.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Toby Marsh
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 3 Quotes

And by the time they return home to Villon, she will already be a different version of herself. A room with the windows all thrown wide, eager to let in the fresh air, the sunlight, the spring.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Jean LaRue (Addie’s Father)
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 4 Quotes

Estele’s face darkens. “The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price.” She leans over Adeline, casting her in shadow. “And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”

Related Characters: Estele (speaker), Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Jean LaRue (Addie’s Father), Marthe LaRue (Addie’s Mother)
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 5 Quotes

There was no danger in it, no reproach, not when she was young. All girls are prone to dreaming. She will grow out of it, her parents say—but instead, Adeline feels herself growing in, holding tighter to the stubborn hope of something more.

The world should be getting larger. Instead, she feels it shrinking, tightening like chains around her limbs as the flat lines of her own body begin to curve out against it, and suddenly the charcoal beneath her nails is unbecoming, as is the idea that she would choose her own company over Arnaud’s or George’s, or any man who might have her.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Jean LaRue (Addie’s Father), Marthe LaRue (Addie’s Mother), George Caron
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 8 Quotes

Adeline had wanted to be a tree. To grow wild and deep, belong to no one but the ground beneath her feet, and the sky above, just like Estele. It would be an unconventional life, and perhaps a little lonely, but at least it would be hers. She would belong to no one but herself.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Estele, Roger
Related Symbols: Trees
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 13 Quotes

This is how she would remember him. Not by the sad unknowing in his eyes, or the grim set of his jaw as he led her to church, but by the things he loved. By the way he showed her how to hold a stick of charcoal, coaxing shapes and shades with the weight of her hand. The songs and stories, the sights from the five summers she went with him to market, when Adeline was old enough to travel, but not old enough to cause a stir.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Jean LaRue (Addie’s Father)
Related Symbols: Art
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 7 Quotes

“You think it will get easier,” he says. “It will not. You are as good as gone, and every year you live will feel a lifetime, and in every lifetime, you will be forgotten. Your pain is meaningless. Your life is meaningless. The years will be like weights around your ankles. They will crush you, bit by bit, and when you cannot stand it, you will beg me to put you from your misery.”

Related Characters: Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger (speaker), Adeline “Addie” LaRue
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 10 Quotes

The first shot may have been fired back in Villon, when he stole her life along with her soul, but this, this, is the beginning of the war.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3, Chapter 4 Quotes

Remy nods thoughtfully. “Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”

Related Characters: Remy Laurent (speaker), Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger
Page Number: 179
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3, Chapter 9 Quotes

Mischief glints in those green eyes. “I think you’ll find my word won’t fade as fast as yours.” He shrugs. “They will not remember you, of course. But ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root.”

Related Characters: Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger (speaker), Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Madame Geoffrin
Related Symbols: Art
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4, Chapter 11 Quotes

“Three hundred years,” she whispers. “And you can still find something new.” When they step out the other side, blinking in the afternoon light, she is already pulling him on, out of the Sky and on to the next archway, the next set of doors, eager to discover whatever waits beyond.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue (speaker), Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Henry Strauss
Related Symbols: Art
Page Number: 268
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5, Chapter 3 Quotes

“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.”

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue (speaker), Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger (speaker)
Related Symbols: Addie’s Wooden Ring
Page Number: 313
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5, Chapter 7 Quotes

Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.

Because two blocks away, in that small studio over the café, there is an artist, and on one of his pages, there is a drawing, and it is of her. And now Addie closes her eyes, and tips her head back, and smiles, hope swelling in her chest. A crack in the walls of this unyielding curse. She thought she’d studied every inch, but here, a door, ajar onto a new and undiscovered room.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue, Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Madame Geoffrin, Matteo
Related Symbols: Art
Page Number: 327
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 11 Quotes

“What is real to you, Adeline? Since my love counts for nothing?”

“You are not capable of love.”

He scowls, his eyes flashing emerald. “Because I am not human? Because I do not wither and die?”

“No,” she says, drawing back her hand. “You are not capable of love because you cannot understand what it is to care for someone else more than yourself. If you loved me, you would have let me go by now.”

Luc flicks his fingers. “What nonsense,” he says. “It is because I love you that I won’t. Love is hungry. Love is selfish.”

“You are thinking of possession.” He shrugs. “Are they so different? I have seen what humans do to things they love.”

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue (speaker), Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger (speaker), Henry Strauss
Page Number: 402
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 13 Quotes

Addie shakes her head. “You see only flaws and faults, weaknesses to be exploited. But humans are messy, Luc. That is the wonder of them. They live and love and make mistakes, and they feel so much.

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue (speaker), Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Henry Strauss
Page Number: 408
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 16 Quotes

“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”

And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it.

Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow?

Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain?

And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, “Always.”

Related Characters: Adeline “Addie” LaRue (speaker), Luc/The Darkness/The Stranger, Henry Strauss
Page Number: 418
Explanation and Analysis: