Previous
Chapter 17: Stella
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Five Feet Apart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Sacrifice
Death, Grief, and Guilt
Risk and Consequences
Survival, Terminal Illness, and Hope
Hardship and Family Dynamics
Summary
Analysis
Will can’t stop looking at Stella in the atrium, but he finally averts his gaze to a tropical fish tank in the corner. They both look at the fish, and Stella says that she’s always wanted to be able to hold her breath long enough to swim like one of the fish. Stella and Will walk around the hospital, both holding one end of the pool cue the whole time. Will tells Stella that since his dad left, his mom seems to try to care about Will enough for two parents. He feels like she doesn’t actually care about him, though, as much as she just wants to beat his disease.
Will’s diagnosis of cystic fibrosis with B. cepacia strains his relationship with his mom. In contrast to Stella, Will has spent most of the last eight months doing everything he can to avoid his treatments, against his mother’s wishes. Though Will’s mom doesn’t express her care for Will very effectively, she does care deeply for him. She sends him to drug trials only because she wants to keep him alive as long as possible. Will eventually realizes that his mom is not as selfish as he initially thought—his relationship to her is just hindered by the tragedy of his diagnosis.
Themes
Stella leads them into the gym and then into the pool room. Stella says that she thinks there is some kind of life after death. Will thinks that death is simply the end, but Stella doesn’t accept that Abby is simply gone. She tells Will that Abby broke her neck and drowned, and Stella constantly replays what Abby’s final moments were like, though she’ll never really know. Stella wonders what it’s like to drown. Will remarks that they both will die by drowning—they’ll drown in their bodies’ own fluids.
Will and Stella have both known their whole lives that they will die relatively young, which has made them more aware of death than most other teenagers are. They each struggle with this knowledge in different but equally unhealthy ways. Will is apathetic towards his death, and Stella is obsessed with avoiding hers. Their conversation about drowning foreshadows the climax of the novel, as readers will soon discover.
Themes
Will tells Stella how beautiful she is as he traces her body with the pool cue. She strips into her underwear and goes in the water, and Will follows after her. He wants to touch her but knows he can’t, and they both struggle to breathe as they are overcome with desire for each other. They look at each other underwater, and Will feels that he is falling in love.
Will and Stella struggling to breathe in the pool also foreshadows what happens to Stella in Chapter 24. Even though Stella is willing to break the rules by staying only five feet away from Will, touching him is still too dangerous because of how contagious B. cepacia is.
Themes
