Love and Intimacy Theme Analysis

Eleanor and Park—like Romeo and Juliet, the play the novel’s titular characters are studying in their sophomore English class—is a story about first love in all its overwhelming, all-consuming glory. As the spiny, self-contained Eleanor Douglas and the starry-eyed Park Sheridan embark on their first real foray into romance, they learn a lot about how to best love and care for one another—and for themselves. Through their journey, Rowell argues that true love can enable people to connect not just with others, but also to reach a greater level of understanding and intimacy of and with themselves.

Eleanor and Park is a love story, and like a traditional romance, it centers around the burgeoning connection between its two protagonists. The novel’s deeper layers, however, show how Eleanor and Park, through their explorations of love and intimacy, actually learn not just how to care for and bond with another person, but also how to discover and embrace more intimate truths about themselves. Eleanor and Park are thrust together by chance when they are forced, one fateful day, to sit together on the school bus—even though Park worries that sitting with the redheaded, crazily-dressed new girl is social suicide. As the days go by, however, they find pleasure in one another’s company, and continue sitting together. They connect at first over comic books, which are Park’s obsession, and music, which is Eleanor’s. As they share their interests, they begin bonding, and their intellectual connection soon leads to an emotional one.

Soon, Eleanor and Park are holding hands surreptitiously, admitting to “missing” one another throughout the school day, and scheduling late-night phone dates. Though Eleanor and Park couldn’t be more different—the sharp-tongued, cynical Eleanor stands in direct contrast to the quiet, idealistic Park—they’re soon confessing their love for one another. Eleanor is reluctant to use the word “love,” but tells Park that she “think[s] she live[s] for [him.]” Their feelings are intense and overwhelming—and though the cynical Eleanor worries the two of them are a parody of young love just like the titular characters of Romeo and Juliet, she can’t help her emotions. Neither Eleanor nor Park has been in love before, and as they tumble into emotional, verbal, and physical intimacy with one another, they push back against their shame and insecurities to make room for one another. The connection they share is profound, and yet as they grow closer to one another, they find themselves privately considering how their relationship has allowed them each to understand and accept themselves.

Eleanor, who has always hated her big-boned body, finds herself feeling less ashamed of her curves, and even experiencing a newfound appreciation for who she is in Park’s eyes. “Everywhere [Park] touche[s] her [feels] safe,” she thinks to herself one evening after they’ve parted ways. Park, too, is grateful that Eleanor finds him attractive—it’s not that Park has felt ugly so much as he’s felt feminized and “othered” by his classmates’ flagrant airing of cruel stereotypes about Asian men. Through Eleanor, Park is able to see himself in a new light, and attain a newfound confidence.

The self-love Eleanor and Park find themselves experiencing as they fall more deeply in love with one another isn’t just physical, but emotional as well. Eleanor, who has always kept her feelings at arm’s length as a kind of defense mechanism—a byproduct of growing up in an abusive household with four younger siblings, a place where there’s never been any room for her emotions—begins experiencing life more deeply. She allows herself to surrender to hope and happiness as she spends more time with Park, and indeed allows herself to be loved unconditionally for the first time in her life. Even her own mother sent Eleanor away when she clashed with Richie—but with Park, Eleanor never has to be anyone but herself, and she is allowed to experience the part of herself that feels deeply and fearlessly. Park, too, allows himself to let loose emotionally—he has been shrinking himself in order to fit in with his cruel schoolmates, but with Eleanor by his side, he at last stands up to them (even though it means getting into a fistfight with his popular friend Steve.) Park also develops enough self-confidence to explore a long held-fantasy: wearing eyeliner to school. Even when his father mocks and berates him, Park feels less cowed by the prospect of being both physically and emotionally vulnerable, thanks to the support he feels radiating from Eleanor.

At the start of the novel, Eleanor and Park are loners hungry for acceptance and love. The romance they share validates those feelings of wanting to be seen, understood, and embraced for who they are—but the wild, intense love they feel for one another allows them, in the end, to connect more deeply with who they are inside, and actually begin to embrace themselves. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, whose whirlwind romance estranged them from their families, themselves, and eventually one another, Eleanor and Park find that the pure, healthy love they share with each other opens up new insights about who they are, what they want, and what they need.