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Bad Days: Chapter 37
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Enduring Impact of Trauma
Shame and the Stigmatization of Pain
Projection and Denial
The Vicious Circle of Isolation and Social Awkwardness
Summary
Analysis
Raymond wants to meet Eleanor at Maria Temple’s office for coffee. He arrives, and they go to a coffee shop. Eleanor gets into a minor altercation with the barista when he tells her that he needs to write her name on her coffee cup. Amused and unsurprised by this scene, Raymond tells the barista his name is “Raoul” when it’s his turn. Raymond looks at Eleanor’s face and sees that she’d been crying earlier, and she tells him about Marianne. He tells her that he knows. Eleanor continues, explaining to Raymond that now that she’s acknowledged what Mummy did out loud, she can no longer continue to keep her in her life. Raymond approves of this decision.
Eleanor’s quirky mannerisms have become familiar and endearing to Raymond since getting to know Eleanor, so he’s amused and not annoyed by her adamant refusal not to give the barista her name. Raymond’s amusement suggests that the more one gets to know others, the more sympathetic and understandable their quirks become Eleanor’s decision to stop talking to Mummy shows that she is ready to leave her past behind and come to terms with the unresolved trauma in her life.
Themes
Eleanor tells Raymond that she wants him to find out about and tell her everything that happened to her. He tells her that he will, and that he’ll share his findings with her whenever she’s ready. Raymond squeezes Eleanor’s hands and she feels a “gentle heat” reach all the way down to “the unscarred piece of [her] heart." She thanks him for his friendship. He tells her he knows she’d do the same for him. Eleanor starts to cry, which makes her makeup run. Raymond tells her she looks better without it.
This scene resonates with the moment earlier in the novel in which Eleanor looks in the mirror and hopes that there is enough of her left undamaged to love and be loved; her closeness with Raymond proves to her that “the unscarred piece of [her] heart” is unmarred enough to connect with others. When Raymond tells Eleanor that she looks better without her makeup, he’s really telling her that she doesn’t need makeup to give off the appearance of being fine—she truly is doing fine now, from the inside out.
Themes
Before they part ways, Eleanor tells Raymond that she has a surprise for him. Afterward, Eleanor becomes distracted by thoughts of Mummy and Marianne. She knows it’s time to confront her past.
Before, Eleanor could only repress and deny her past; now, she can’t stop thinking about it. This change shows how significantly Eleanor’s relationship to her past has changed—for the better.
Themes
