Stella’s relationship with her parents changes after her sister Abby’s death, the event that is the catalyst of their divorce. Though Stella is still a teenager, she becomes fully responsible for herself as her parents become emotionally unavailable, and she takes on a caretaker role to her parents as well. She feels a constant responsibility to look out for them and ensure their wellbeing. Over the course of the novel the dynamic shifts back, as Stella’s parents recover and adapt to the loss of their first child, and they become responsible parents again who can provide comfort and stability to Stella. Stella also processes the loss of her sister over the course of the novel, and she is eventually able to comfortably reminisce with her friends and family about Abby.
Will’s relationship to his mother is also strained at the start of the novel. Will thinks that his mom is obsessed with curing Will’s disease for her own selfish reasons, and he doesn’t believe that she genuinely cares about or even knows him. Will unleashes his true feelings about his mom when she visits for his birthday, but shortly after she leaves he discovers that she had brought him a thoughtful birthday present of his favorite cartoon—a gift that only someone who pays close attention to him would get. Will realizes that though his mom could do better in many ways, he had a shortsighted view of her himself, and he has not always been the most loving son. Will eventually reveals to Stella that his dad left when he found out Will was sick. Will claims to be unaffected by his dad’s absence, but Will knows that his dad leaving has impacted his mom and made her even more overbearing about Will’s disease. By the end of the novel, Will and his mom are closer than ever before. The novel portrays both Will and Stella’s family lives as strained yet dynamic and flexible, suggesting that hardship within families—like death, separation, and terminal illness—may cause friction, but it can also motivate a family to become adaptable and even to bond over shared struggle.
Hardship and Family Dynamics ThemeTracker
Hardship and Family Dynamics Quotes in Five Feet Apart
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, hearing the familiar wheeze of my lungs trying desperately to fill with air through the sea of mucus. Exhaling slowly, I slap a big Hallmark-greeting-card smile on my face before opening my eyes and pressing the enter key to go live.
Lying back, I pick up the worn panda resting on my pillows and wrap my arms tightly around him. Patches, my sister, Abby, named him. And what a fitting name that became. The years of coming in and out of the hospital with me have certainly taken their toll on him.
The only thing I remember from most of my hospital stays is white. White hospital sheets, white walls, white lab coats, all running together. But I do remember the mountains and mountains of snow that fell while I was there, the same white, only beautiful, less sterile.
Even before they knew me, they did their very best to help me feel like Saint Grace’s Hospital was my second home from the moment I got there. But, of everyone, it was Abby who really did that. She gave me three invaluable gifts that day.
Stella’s been taking care of all of us. Her mom, her dad, me. I keep counting down to eighteen, to being an adult, holding the reins. Maybe it’s time I actually acted like it.
Without me, my mom is all alone. All this time I thought she only saw my disease. A problem you fix. But, instead, she was looking right at me, trying to get me to fight alongside her, when all I did was fight her tooth and nail.