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82. Proof of Life
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Everything, Everything, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age
Trust and Lies
Family, Abuse, and Bravery
The Value of Experience
Summary
Analysis
Maddy runs out the front door and vomits. She cries and laughs and thinks that she’s never been sick. She feels like she’s struggling in an ocean as Mom comes outside and fearfully tells Maddy to go back inside because she’s sick and something could happen. Maddy jerks away from Mom’s outstretched arm, but Mom continues to plead with her. She says she can’t lose Maddy after losing Maddy’s dad and brother. When she bursts into tears, Maddy thinks that Carla was right. Mom sobs that Maddy got so sick after they died, and she couldn’t believe it was just an allergy. She says needed to protect Maddy, since anything can happen out in the world. Maddy knows she should feel compassion, but instead, she angrily screams that she’s not sick and that this is Mom’s fault. Mom begs Maddy to stay with her, since Maddy is all she has.
The revelation that Maddy isn’t sick is both a blessing and a curse, as it means that Maddy has a future outside—she can, for instance, go on and be an architect—but it also means that Mom has been lying to her for her entire life. Mom’s responses reveal that she desperately wanted to protect Maddy from everything bad that she experienced, both physical and emotional, after Maddy’s birth and the death of Maddy’s dad and brother. That Maddy can’t bring herself to feel compassion may read as harsh, but it also suggests that now, Maddy has truly broken away from Mom and has become her own person.
Themes
