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March 2005
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Still Alice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ambition and Success
Loss of Identity
Illness, Marriage, and Family
Alzheimer’s, Quality of Life, and Happiness
Summary
Analysis
For a time after her speech, Alice feels like “Alice Howland, brave and remarkable hero.” However, “the high wasn’t sustainable” and she loses confidence as she makes more and more mistakes and the memory of the speech fades. Before she knows it, she becomes “Alice Howland, Alzheimer’s victim.”
Alice’s prediction that she will lose her memory of her speech comes true all too soon as she finds herself entering another rapid decline and making more and more mistakes that she hadn’t made before. For her, becoming “Alice Howland, Alzheimer’s victim” means once again losing her identity as a gifted public speaker whose opinions matter.
Themes
One day, John wakes Alice up and gets her dressed. They go to the hospital and enter a room with a woman sleeping on a bed. Alice asks what’s wrong and John tells her the woman is just tired. A young man comes in and John congratulates him. The man tells them he’ll go get “the babies” and leaves the room. A short time later, he walks back in with two wheeled carts, each of which has a baby in it. The man wakes the woman up and she becomes excited when she sees Alice and John. Alice realizes the woman is Anna.
One of the items on Alice’s earlier list of things she wanted to live to see was that she wanted to meet Anna’s babies. Although she struggles to recognize Anna at first, Alice has successfully kept enough of her self-awareness and identity to recognize the importance of the event.
Themes
Anna introduces the babies as Allison Anne and Charles Thomas. The young man hands one baby to John and the other to Alice. Cuddling the new baby, Alice finally says, “Anna, you had your babies” and recognizes them as her grandchildren. She asks if they will get Alzheimer’s “like I did” and Anna says they won’t. Alice takes a deep breath and feels “a sense of relief and peace she hadn’t known in a long time.”
Alice’s sense of relief when Anna tells her that the babies will not develop Alzheimer’s when they grow up echoes her earlier peace of mind when she learned that Anna had had her embryos genetically tested to make sure they didn’t carry the PS1 mutation. That sense of relief, however, is heightened now that Alice has had more experience with the intermediate stages of Alzheimer’s, highlighting the deep love she has for her family and the lingering fear that, because she carried and passed on the mutation, she might be responsible for their future suffering.
Themes
A woman tells Alice that she got into both NYU and Brandeis University, meaning she can choose whether to live near New York City or Cambridge. The woman says she likes Brandeis better, partially because it means she can stay near Cambridge and close to Alice if she stays. Alice is confused and asks why she would move away. Alice encourages her to make a choice “based on what’s right for [her] life.” The woman agrees and tells her that they have “come a long way.” Alice is confused but talks to her about studying acting and her love of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Suddenly the woman hugs her and it “penetrate[s] Alice much like her peanut butter eyes had.” Alice feels “close to her.” The woman asks her not to move to New York, and Alice asks why she would do that.
Although the reader can recognize the woman Alice is talking to as Lydia, Alice herself is no longer able to recognize her. More importantly, Lydia continues to show her mother the respect for her opinions that Alice has been missing from others, shown by the fact that Lydia is turning to Alice for advice about which college she should go to. Although Alice does not recognize Lydia, she still feels an indefinable sense of closeness with her that confirms Alice’s earlier thought that the love she has for her children is so inherent in her as a person that it will remain safe from the destruction Alzheimer’s is creating in her brain.
Themes
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John walks into the kitchen where “the actress” and “the mother” are talking about how tired they are. “Lydia” asks John how he’s going to take Alice to New York and care for her on his own. He says he’ll “hire a home health aide,” but “the actress” doesn’t like this idea, nor does “the mother.” John argues that they won’t have time to take care of her either and that Alice wouldn’t “want to be a burden.” “The mother” says she wouldn’t be a burden.
Alice can no longer recognize Anna, who she simply refers to as “the mother” because she does know that she is the mother of the babies who are in the house. Although Alice had once feared that her children would see her as a burden, both Anna and Lydia are insisting that Alice isn’t a burden, something that would have made her extremely proud if she were able to follow the conversation and recognize them.
Themes
Distracted by the fussy baby she’s holding, Alice has a hard time following or understanding the conversation. She can tell it’s a “serious argument,” though. “The mother” asks why “Mom” doesn’t get a say here, and “the actress” says she doesn’t want to live in New York. John argues that Alice doesn’t know what she wants, but “the actress” says he’s “choosing to dismiss what she wants because she has Alzheimer’s.” Alice realizes they are arguing about her. John says that Alice doesn’t always get what she wants and “wouldn’t want to be here like this.” “The mother” asks what that means, but John doesn’t answer. They argue about the decision until Johns says he has to go, slamming the door behind him. This makes everyone but Alice—who isn’t “sad or angry or defeated or scared,” but hungry—cry. Alice asks what they’re having for dinner.
With Alice only able to keep up with the sky-high emotions in the room, she struggles to understand the purpose of the conversation. A few moths before, she felt irritated and dehumanized by the fact that her family was discussing her right in front of her without allowing her a voice. Now, however, the knowledge that they are arguing over her doesn’t inspire any strong emotion in her. This shows a further loss of identity and sense of self-worth that has happened so rapidly that Alice has not been able to understand or mourn it.
Themes
