Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humans vs. Animals
Family, Tradition, and the Past
Absence, Silence, and Denial
Science, Knowledge, and Experiments
Normalcy vs. Deviance
Summary
Analysis
Rosemary admits that she isn’t sure if the story she told Harlow about staying with her grandparents is true. She reflects that language distorts people’s memories and adds that now Lowell has come back, she’s not sure if she can keep telling the story without returning to her family’s past—the part she has “never told before.”
This is another metafictional commentary on the nature of memory and storytelling. As the sole narrator, Rosemary has total authority over the story, yet undermines this authority by questioning the validity of her memories and her ability to tell the truth.
Themes
