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Chapter 37
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Midnight Library, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Regret, Depression, and Suicide
Philosophy and the Meaning of Life
Possibility and Perseverance
Embracing Imperfection
Summary
Analysis
Nora wakes up in a bed next to a sleeping man who she assumes must be Ash. She feels very tired and plans to go downstairs to lie on the couch and research herself on her phone. But when she opens the bedroom door, she’s met with the sight of a small girl, about four years old. She’s clearly Nora’s daughter in this life, and she says she had a nightmare. Nora immediately feels like an imposter, wondering how she can hope to seamlessly enter a life like this one; the previous lives she’d tried where she’d had children hadn’t lasted very long. Nora does her best to calm the child down, but the girl notices Nora’s tone of unease.
It's notable that Nora’s initial reaction to the fact that she has a daughter is one of fear and unease. She’s previously expressed a vague interest in the possibility of having children, although she’s always been hesitant about becoming a mother. In this moment, Nora has stepped into motherhood by accident and is hit by a wall of panic as a result, knowing how much a relationship like this means to both her and her daughter.
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The girl tells Nora that she’s still frightened from her nightmare about bears, and asks her to hold her hand. As Nora holds her daughter’s hand and looks at her face, she feels a swell of irrational affection for this child who both is and isn’t hers. She’s terrified by this feeling, but unable to run from it as she leads the girl to her bedroom, which is full of toys and stuffed animals. Still thinking about her bad dream, the girl asks Nora what happens to people when they die. Nora says that a person can choose any life they want just before they die, but tells her daughter that she won’t have to worry about dying for a long time. As dangerous as it feels, Nora’s love for her child grows stronger by the minute.
Before her fear of commitment to motherhood can pull her away from this life, Nora is anchored by the sudden swell of love she feels for her daughter. Of all the circumstances in all of her possible lives —possibly even including the polar bear encounter—this situation ironically feels the most daunting for Nora. But even as she’s scared of what she’s feeling, she can’t help but embrace that fear wholeheartedly and stay in this life, just as a mother loves her child unconditionally.
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Nora tells her daughter that if she’s feeling scared about things she doesn’t know, it helps to remember and recite things that she does know, to banish the fear. She frames this idea as a game, using it as an excuse to ask her daughter questions about the life she’s just stepped into. During this game, Nora finds out that her daughter’s name is Molly, and that Nora and Ash live in Cambridge. Molly says that Nora and Ash love each other and sometimes raise their voices, but they always apologize afterwards. Nora usually works as a philosophy professor at Cambridge, but she’s taking time off to write a book. Ash is still a surgeon in this life. The game continues until Molly drifts off to sleep, and Nora soon falls asleep on the floor of Molly’s room herself.
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