Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling
Religion and Control
The Pursuit of Love and Happiness
Mothers, Daughters, and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
In her own work, Jeanette writes, she has “pushed against the weight of clock time, calendar time, [and] linear unravelings.” She is, as a writer and as a person, more interested in the whys of things than the whens. She argues that “Creative work bridges time because the energy of art is not time-bound”—in other words, she is able to exist outside of time, in a way, through her own writing. She enjoys “reading [her]self as a fiction [rather] than as a fact,” and accepts that her writing about herself will always be disjointed from both time and reality.
Jaenette examines the role of time in her work, and in her life. As she prepares to bridge the two major sections of her novel, which are separated by over twenty years, she reflects on the ways that separating her work from the place it exists in time allows her to see the “fiction” of her life unfold.
Themes
