Coming of Age Theme Analysis

Everything, Everything follows 18-year-old Maddy Whittier, a precocious and observant teen who also has SCID, a severe autoimmune disorder. Since Maddy’s diagnosis at a few months old, she hasn’t been able to safely leave her purified, sanitized, air-locked house. Maddy’s life, however, is a comfortable one: she spends her days reading and doing homework for her online classes, supervised by her nurse, Carla. In the evenings, she plays games and spends time with her single mom, who is a doctor. Maddy’s condition means that for her, coming of age and growing up aren’t especially interesting or compelling concepts, as she understands that for her safety, her life can’t change in substantial ways as she becomes an adult. Because of this, the novel questions what adulthood looks like for someone like Maddy—and when the questions of boys, romance, and the truth of Maddy’s diagnosis come into question, it suggests that coming of age doesn’t simply mean turning 18 and becoming a legal adult. Rather, coming of age is about developing independence and making one’s own choices about life, even if those choices are difficult, painful, and even hurtful to others.

Maddy’s condition complicates normal coming-of-age milestones by rendering them relatively uneventful for her. She celebrates her 18th birthday early on in the novel, and while this is the age at which people in the U.S. are considered adults, Maddy’s birthday means little to her or to Mom in this sense. Instead, her birthday is a bittersweet day every year, and Mom and Maddy are both aware that she’s lucky to see her 18th birthday—SCID means that Maddy could become seriously ill and die at any moment. Because of this, Maddy says little about her impending life as an adult, even if it’s only as an adult based on age. She gives no real insight throughout the novel into what she might want her life as an adult to look like, as her illness means that in all likelihood, nothing can change. For her safety, she must remain in her sanitary home under Mom and Carla’s watchful eyes. All of this gives the impression that Maddy is a young woman essentially stuck in time. While she may have made the transition already from child to teenager, there’s little indication that she even has the desire to make the transition from teenager to independent adult—perhaps because she is afraid to admit that desire to herself and be let down. The thought of coming of age, in this sense, simply isn’t something Maddy allows herself to think about.

All of this begins to change when a boy named Olly and his family move in next door. Maddy is immediately attracted to Olly, and this attraction brings up a number of important questions for her—namely what, if anything, she will ever do about love and romance. The only people allowed in Maddy’s house on a regular basis are Mom and Carla—anyone else who enters isn’t allowed to even sit next to Maddy, let alone touch her. As these questions about romance and relationships arise, Carla offers what is, for someone like Maddy, a controversial and potentially dangerous view: that desiring romance and falling in love is a normal part of growing up. Because of these convictions, Carla allows Olly to visit regularly and even lets Olly and Maddy hang out with each other without supervision, something that gives Maddy the opportunity to begin to figure out her identity separate from who she is around her mom and Carla. In this sense, Olly is important to Maddy’s journey of self-discovery in terms of more than just romance. He represents Maddy’s first chance to be around someone her own age, and their bond starts to impress upon Maddy the importance—and the fun—of developing friendships and sharing opinions and conversations with new people. Through her interactions with Olly, Maddy is able to better determine who she wants to be and how she wants to act around people.

As Maddy and Olly’s relationship progresses and deepens, Maddy takes a flying leap forward in terms of maturity when she secretly books a trip for her and Olly to Hawaii, a place she’s always dreamed of visiting but where her illness has prevented her from going. In doing this, Maddy asserts her independence from Mom and recognizes that it’s neither healthy nor fulfilling to remain, in practice, a teenager forever. Instead, if she wants to exist in the world as a whole and contributing member of society, she decides that it’s important to experience it as an independent adult—even if it might kill her. The trip to Hawaii is an experience of growth and independence for Maddy in a variety of ways. It’s the first time she’s been on her own, let alone out of the house, and she and Olly also take the very adult step of having sex. However, most important for Maddy’s coming of age is that she becomes suddenly ill—this causes her to discover, a few months after the fact, that she doesn’t have SCID after all. This discovery gives Maddy something she’s never had before, given the fact that Mom has been the one overseeing Maddy’s care since her diagnosis: independence and autonomy over her healthcare decisions. Maddy chooses to pursue testing that reveals that she indeed doesn’t have SCID—Mom gave Maddy a fake diagnosis when she was a baby, a product of the trauma, grief, and desire for control that Mom experienced when she lost Maddy’s dad and brother in a car accident a few months after Maddy’s birth.

Though Maddy’s journey of discovering she doesn’t have SCID represents an extreme example, it does suggest more broadly that an intrinsic and necessary part of coming of age entails declaring one’s independence and questioning some of the things that parents present as fact. Even if doing so is difficult, dangerous, and in this case, damages Maddy’s trust in her mom, the novel makes it clear that it’s impossible and unhealthy for teens to remain dependent on their parents and unthinkingly trusting of them forever.