Language, Meaning, and Control Theme Analysis

Both Violet and Finch love language and literature. Prior to her sister Eleanor’s death, Violet wrote content for a web magazine she created with Eleanor, and she planned to attend NYU’s creative writing program. Finch, meanwhile, is a singer-songwriter who “collects” words as part of his creative process. As he and Violet get to know each other, they explore how their changing relationships to language and literature help them feel more in control of their lives and connect with each other—or, in some instances, do the opposite. With this, All the Bright Places shows that a person’s relationship to language or to a work of literature isn’t static. Rather, the way a person uses writing to describe their experiences or draws meaning from literature changes depending on their mental or emotional state. Moreover, putting one’s experiences into words, or borrowing others’ words to describe one’s experiences, can help a person feel more in control of their life.

For both Violet and Finch, repurposing and reinterpreting others’ words—whether that be novels, poems, or even suicide notes—helps them make sense of their lives. Finch habitually reads and memorizes famous authors’ suicide notes. This interest goes hand in hand with his own interest in suicide—these authors’ suicide notes help him think through what death might be like, or what makes a death “meaningful” or “heroic.” However, the novel also makes it clear that Finch’s focus on authors’ suicide notes has a cost—for instance, when he and Violet chat on Facebook and exchange Virginia Woolf quotes, Finch finds that he’s out of his element. Though he has Virginia Woolf’s suicide note memorized, for instance, he’s unfamiliar with her body of work and so struggles to come up with quotes to send to Violet. With this, All the Bright Places suggests that the specific pieces of writing that someone focuses on fundamentally shapes how they make sense of their life. Because Finch focuses so intently on writers’ suicide notes, he never has the opportunity to consider other perspectives that focus on life over death. Violet, on the other hand, reads everything from the Brontë sisters’ novels to Woolf’s novel The Waves to Dr. Seuss’s picture book Oh, the Places You’ll Go!. And, as a result, she has a much broader range of works to draw on. In other words, the books Violet reads show her a variety of options when it comes to how to live her life—in comparison to Finch, who focuses mostly on death and suicide.

In addition, the novel suggests that putting one’s experiences into writing gives a person the opportunity to shape their own reality and can thereby make them feel more secure and confident. Violet, for instance, only begins to heal from her grief over Eleanor’s death when Finch convinces her to start writing again. Though Violet loved writing before Eleanor died, she found after Eleanor’s death that she couldn’t bring herself to do it anymore. As Violet starts to write again, she gradually finds herself feeling happier, healthier, and more in control. While she felt unmoored and hopeless during the period in which she couldn’t write, being able to write again gives her control over her life’s story as well as the sense of purpose that she craves. Finch also feels able to face the difficulties of living with an undiagnosed mental illness because he’s nevertheless able to continue writing songs and “collecting” ideas. He keeps a “Wall of Thoughts” on one wall of his bedroom, where he sticks sticky notes and other scrap paper scribbled with words, phrases, and other interesting text. And the notes on the Wall of Thoughts, he explains, form the basis for his songwriting, something that keeps him grounded even as his mental health cyclically improves and then worsens.

All the Bright Places links the inability to control, interpret, or manipulate language to mental health—and it suggests that being unable to effectively describe one’s experience can have disastrous consequences. Despite Finch’s love of words and language, he can’t describe his struggles with mental health clearly. The novel implies that Finch has undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and he refers to his cycles of depression and mania as being “Asleep” and “Awake,” respectively. And though these terms describe how Finch moves through the world in a very basic sense, saying that he’s “Awake” doesn’t fully encapsulate his inability to eat or sleep; the sensation that time is “folding”; or his constant terror that Violet is going to find out he’s mentally unwell. Further, as Finch’s mental health deteriorates, he finds himself unable to read, write, or otherwise interpret the written word. As Finch begins experiencing the headaches that he knows signal the end of being “Awake,” he struggles to pay attention in school or read anything. And so instead of taking in new material, Finch can’t help but fixate on words that he knows are self-destructive and unhelpful (such as “worthless” and “freak”) as well as his favorite authors’ suicide notes. He ultimately runs away and commits suicide without leaving a proper suicide note, something that drives home how wholly unable he was to put his thoughts and feelings into words.

Violet, on the other hand, demonstrates how fulfilling and healing it can be to put one’s thoughts and experiences into words. When Finch disappears, and especially after his death, Violet begins to connect with other girls at school through Germ Magazine, an online magazine that she creates. As Violet invites classmates to contribute and spends time with them planning the magazine’s features, she finds that she doesn’t feel so alone anymore—and for the first time in a long time, she feels in control of her life. The fact that she experiences these revelations as she creates a web magazine for others to read and engage with speaks to her understanding of what writing and reading can do: help people discover that they’re not alone in their thoughts or fears, and through doing so, connect them to others.