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23. Perspectives
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
Wanting more scares Maddy, so she sends Olly an email saying that she’s busy and needs to get some sleep over the weekend. She unplugs her computer and hides it. Maddy spends Saturday on calculus, which she hates and isn’t good at. When Carla asks, Maddy refuses to say anything about Olly. By Sunday, Maddy feels that her inbox must be overflowing with emails from Olly. She reads Alice in Wonderland on her white couch and feels like she’s trying to not get lost, just like Alice. Maddy thinks of how badly she wanted to go outside and play with kids when she was eight. She knows now that wanting just leads to more wanting, so she doesn’t check her email. Maddy’s review of Alice in Wonderland is that the Queen of Hearts is someone to watch out for.
Maddy’s fear is entirely understandable, given that the last time she expressed interest in leaving the house and seeing the world, all she got was heartache. This makes it clear that even if heartache isn’t something that’s going to kill Maddy in the literal sense, it’s still something uncomfortable that, given her comfortable upbringing, she feels compelled to do everything in her power to avoid. Conceptualizing falling in love with Olly as getting lost makes it very clear that Maddy is out of her element, even if she’s read books about romance before.
Themes
