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Chapter 56
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Eleanor and Park, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Adolescence and Shame
Love and Intimacy
Poverty and Class
Family and Abuse
Summary
Analysis
Park has stopped trying to “bring [Eleanor] back” but can’t stop walking by her old house, even though she’s been gone almost a year. One afternoon, he watches from across the street as Richie’s truck pulls into the driveway and the driver’s side door opens. Richie steps out of the cab and begins moving slowly and uncertainly. Park approaches him. Richie asks what Park wants, and Park can tell from Richie’s gait and the way he’s slurring his words that he’s drunk. Richie falls over onto his face. Park looks down at his steel-toed Doc Martens and wishes he had the strength to kill Richie. Instead, he just kicks the ground in front of Richie’s face, spraying icy mud into the man’s mouth before walking home.
Park is furious with Richie for all that Richie did to Eleanor—and the way his actions ruined Eleanor and Park’s relationship forever. In a way, however, he actually seems to pity Richie in this scene. Park turns what could have been a pivotal confrontation with devastating consequences for both of them into a moment of self-restraint, proving that he is not the type of person to stoop to senseless violence.
Themes
Meanwhile, in St. Paul, Eleanor lays all her letters from Park out “like tarot cards.” It was bad enough when they were coming every day—now that they’ve stopped coming, though, things feel even worse. Eleanor wonders if it’s “too late.”
Eleanor knows that ignoring Park’s letters was the wrong thing to do—and even though she has fears about making herself the vulnerable one, it seems that she knows she has to write him back.
Themes
