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September 2003
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
Alice enters her office with one of her graduate students, Dan, right behind her. Dan is working on his thesis research and Alice is helping him edit and revise his research paper. Alice gives Dan his rough draft with handwritten notes in the margins and he asks her what the reference is for one of her notes. Alice is typically very quick to remember the details of the different scientific studies, but she struggles to remember this one. Eventually, however, she does remember it and Dan leaves her office to go revise his paper.
The fact that Alice has been chosen by Dan as his thesis adviser shows that she’s not only successful at research, but also as a teacher. The fact that she is able to remember details of various scientific studies offhand also highlights just how knowledgeable she is in the field of psycholinguistics. She does not just know the general findings, but details that one only learns from closely studying and getting to know them over time.
Themes
Alice turns to her to-do list and sees the next item says “Eric,” but she can’t remember what it means. She searches her email for a clue but can’t find one. Frustrated, she throws out the to-do list and makes a new one that includes calling the doctor. These types of “disturbances” with her memory are happening more frequently now and she decides she can no longer put off seeing a doctor.
Alice’s decision to see a doctor is a good sign that she’s ready to admit something is wrong, but her earlier internet search has also convinced her that the only thing that’s going on with her is menopause. She does not yet suspect that her memory problems might be indicative of something serious or abnormal.
Themes
Alice and John walk together to a restaurant for Alice’s 50th birthday dinner. Their daughter, Anna, and her husband, Charlie, are already there. Both Anna and Charlie are successful lawyers at a major law firm. Alice notices that Anna is holding a martini, which means that Anna is not pregnant yet even though she’s been trying to conceive. Alice thinks Anna should wait because pregnancy might disrupt her career, but Anna insists on starting a family right away.
At this point, Alice is able to take a more detached view of Anna’s attempt to get pregnant. Because Alice has no reason to suspect she won’t be healthy and alert for many years to come, she feels no anxiety to meet her grandchildren as soon as possible. In fact, she worries about all the consequences of a pregnancy for Anna, who is just beginning to achieve success in her career just as Alice was when she had Anna.
Themes
Alice’s worry for Anna’s career if she gets pregnant is rooted in her own experience. She thinks back to the time when she was starting her family and how difficult that made it for her to succeed at work. Alice had seen other women with “promising careers” lose them when they started having children and remembers how difficult it was for her to see John, her “intellectual equal,” flourish in his career while hers slowed down. Alice doubts that John would be as successful as he is if their roles were reversed.
Alice’s early struggle to juggle young children, her career, and her marriage shows just how much she has had to overcome to achieve her level of success. Furthermore, these are not problems which John had to face to the same degree as a father. Because of Alice’s experience and the experience of her female colleagues, she sees motherhood almost as a threat to a woman’s career, which further explains her anxiety over Anna’s decision to start a family so early in her law career.
Themes
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Alice, John, Anna, and Charlie all exchange pleasantries while they wait for Tom, to arrive. Tom, Alice’s son, is in his third year of medical school at Harvard, studying to become a thoracic surgeon. Once Tom arrives, they are seated and talk turns to Lydia. Anna takes “transparent pleasure” in the fact that Lydia is not in college because it makes Anna “the smartest, most successful Howland daughter.” She asks if Lydia’s been cast in anything yet and John tells her about a play he’d seen her in. This reminds Alice that John is paying for Lydia’s acting workshops and reminds herself to talk to him about it later.
Alice and John are both ambitious people, and it becomes obvious in this conversation that they’ve passed this quality down to their children. Success for them, however, is measured in tangible achievements, which is why Anna believes she is more successful than Lydia, who has chosen emotional fulfillment over more traditional definitions of success. This also further highlights how different Lydia is from the rest of the Howland family.
Themes
Tom asks John about a “tagging experiment” John is working on. John immediately dives into the conversation and Alice remembers back to when John used to talk this enthusiastically to her about his research. It has been a long time since he’s talked with her in so much detail about his job, and she realizes she only knows the “barest skeleton” of what he is doing. She wonders who got bored with these discussions first, “he in the telling, or she in the listening.”
John’s enthusiastic conversation with Tom further emphasizes how distant Alice and John have grown in their marriage. For Alice, the fact that John doesn’t talk with her like this anymore is proof of lacking something they had in the past but have gradually lost. However, she also admits her own culpability when she admits to becoming bored by his research somewhere along the line.
Themes
Dinner is brought out and they all enjoy it together, ending with an “off-key” performance of “Happy Birthday” and Alice blowing out the candle in a piece of warm cake. John wishes Alice a happy birthday and toasts her “next fifty years.”
John’s final toast to Alice’s “next fifty years” shows that, like Alice herself, he is confident that she has many healthy years ahead of her. The fact that they are so comfortable and confident in the future contrasts with Alice’s growing unease about her memory problems and implies that Alice’s forthcoming years may not be as healthy as they assume.
Themes
Alice goes to the restroom and looks in the mirror. At 50 years old, Alice doesn’t feel like she is “old” yet, but notices that her “golden brown eyes appeared tired even though she was fully rested, and the texture of her skin appeared duller, looser.” She knows she is aging, but she feels “young, strong, and healthy” aside from the memory lapses. Her image in the mirror makes her think of her mother, who died when she was only 41, and her sister, who would have been 48 now.
Alice is willing to admit that she is aging, but she doesn’t feel it. Her body is in good shape, and she still finds herself attractive and feels “young.” This image of herself stands in stark contrast with what is happening in her mind, which seems to be aging and degenerating in spite of her physical body’s condition.
Themes
When Alice sits on the toilet, she notices she’s started her period and she begins to consider the possibility that her symptoms are not menopause-related, but potentially something much more serious. Terrified, Alice begins sobbing in the bathroom. Anna hears her, knocks on the door, and asks if she’s okay.
Again, once Alice is alone, her mind drifts to the problems she has been having. The arrival of her period signals that she may have been mistaken in her self-diagnosed menopause, which forces her to truly confront the possibility that something serious is causing her short-term memories to disappear.
Themes
