Language and Meaning Theme Analysis

All the characters in Turtles All the Way Down are intensely interested in the English language. They're all very well read, and the novel is filled with allusions and references to a number of classic novels, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The characters are also interested in the mechanics of language itself. They ask questions about parts of speech and sentence structure, as well as the words the English language offers to describe different intangible things. As the characters borrow language from authors, poets, and each other, borrowing words from others to create meaning out of their own lives through language becomes, for the characters, an integral part of the process of forging identities.

Many of Aza's questions about language have to do with her inability to describe her pain and her thought spirals to her friends or her therapist, let alone to herself. Her therapist, Dr. Singh, offers the insight that although pain is undeniably real, there are few words to truly describe the depths or the particulars of someone's pain. This leads Aza to one of her scariest questions: if she doesn't have the words to describe herself, is she even real? In this way, Aza creates an equivalence between being real and being able to articulate the meaning of one's experience. In turn, Aza wonders if she's not just unreal, but fictional and literally made up of words written by someone else.

As Aza continues to question her own reality, her increasingly intense thought spirals—along with her inability to articulate her feelings—lead her to feel increasingly isolated. Daisy and Davis, on the other hand, use language as a tool for processing their emotions, by writing Star Wars fanfiction and poetry, respectively. Daisy's weekly Chewbacca installments allow her to mentally escape from reality while making sense of what reality throws at her. Her characters take on the qualities of individuals in Daisy's real life, and the anonymous online platform gives her the opportunity to write what she actually thinks about those individuals. Davis, on the other hand, uses his blog as a public diary. He follows a very specific format in which he respond to a quotation (usually from a novel or from Shakespeare) with a short musing about his life that loosely ties in with the quote. In both cases, Daisy and Davis find a sense of purpose and some relief from their daily struggles by putting their thoughts not just on paper and out of their heads, but literally into the public sphere of the internet. Notably, John Green himself has said about his own novel that he achieved a similar sense of purpose and relief by engaging with Aza, writing her story, and sharing it with others.

This idea that language can be healing echoes throughout the novel: Davis achieves a sense of closure for himself through writing on his blog, and Daisy eventually kills off Ayala, the character who resembles Aza, in order to make amends with Aza. Meanwhile, Aza continues seeing Dr. Singh for talk therapy to manage her illness and her intrusive thoughts. Dr. Singh, however, has a very specific idea of how language can be used to heal and bring closure and comfort. She often nitpicks Aza's word choice when Aza describes her mental illness and encourages her to use language that paints her as more powerful than the illness. In this way, Dr. Singh makes it abundantly clear to Aza that the specific language people use is very important. Language can give a person power or take their power away. In this sense, Dr. Singh suggests that language not only helps people understand their reality—it can also help change a person's reality. The fact that Aza chooses to write a book is perhaps the ultimate testament that she internalizes this lesson about the importance of language.