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81. Madeline’s Dictionary; Identity
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Everything, Everything, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age
Trust and Lies
Family, Abuse, and Bravery
The Value of Experience
Summary
Analysis
Maddy knows that she just needs to fall asleep, but she thinks again and again of Carla saying that Mom is unwell. It’s one a.m. Carla will return in seven hours, and they’re going to draw blood and send it to a SCID specialist. Maddy decides she can’t wait and slips into Mom’s office. It doesn’t look like the office of a mentally unstable person. With shaking hands, Maddy begins to go through the filing cabinet. Mom keeps meticulous records, so it takes Maddy an hour to get through a few files of tax documents, warranties, and movie ticket stubs. In the back of the cabinet she finds a folder labeled with her name. It contains prenatal appointment records, Maddy’s birth certificate, and sick-visit reports for a variety of infections, allergies, and rashes.
Maddy’s aside that Mom’s office doesn’t look like it belongs to someone mentally unwell shows again that what she’s seen of mental illness in books and movies hasn’t prepared her for the fact that oftentimes, mental illness is invisible, even to those close to the sick person. The state of Mom’s office, in other words, doesn’t necessarily say anything about her relative wellness.
Themes
Maddy finds a record of being hospitalized at six months old, a month after Maddy’s dad and brother died, for something called Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). After that, the records change. She finds a printout on RSV on which Mom circled that it’s more severe in people with compromised immune systems, and she finds the first photocopied page of an article on SCID. There are records of visits to an allergist and three different immunologists, all of whom found nothing wrong. Maddy digs for another paper or folder with her SCID diagnosis. She scatters folders on the floor and pulls books off of the shelf, but she finds nothing. Maddy discovers that her name is Mom’s computer password and goes through her files and browsing history. She finds nothing.
Notice that while the novel condemned Mom’s invasion of Maddy’s privacy when Mom went through Maddy’s emails, the same doesn’t hold true when Maddy goes searching for her own medical history. This suggests that a person’s medical history is something that belongs to them and shouldn’t be controlled by someone else—even if the person controlling that history is a parent. As Maddy begins to dive into her history and look for the truth, she also begins to take control of her health, and in doing so, comes of age in an important way.
Themes
Maddy can’t believe it. She feels as though her illness was invented and wonders if Mom has more records in her bedroom. Just as she turns to leave, Mom enters the office, relieved to find Maddy. Maddy loudly asks if she’s actually sick with SCID. She shares that Carla suspects Mom is unwell and demands to see the records of a diagnosis. Mom takes the folder when Maddy shoves it at her and insists the results are in there. Mom looks through the files for a while and then asks Maddy if she took the results. Maddy can hear confusion and fear in Mom’s voice and knows for sure that she doesn’t have SCID.
Mom’s insistence that the results are in there could be an indicator of serious mental illness, as it could suggest that she physically sees something that isn’t there. But for the purpose of Maddy’s story, it only confirms for her that Mom has been lying to her for years about who she is and what’s wrong with her. This seriously damages Maddy’s trust in her mom, as Maddy recognizes that Mom deprived her of everything a normal child would experience—all because Mom is unwell.
Themes
