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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in It Ends with Us, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cycles of Abuse
Naked Truths
Good and Evil
Chosen Family
Summary
Analysis
When Lily gets home, she sees that Ryle won’t be coming over that night because he wants to monitor his patients after a successful surgery. Lily settles down for a quiet evening. She tries to read a book and relax, but she can’t stop thinking about Atlas. Finally, she pulls out her diary and flips to the final entry, ready to be done with the past at last. Lily wrote the entry six months after the last time she saw Atlas. He came back after moving to celebrate Lily’s sixteenth birthday with her.
Again, Lily finds herself in a quiet moment with no one to distract her from her thoughts, which revolve around Atlas. Lily wants so badly to move on from the past, but she feels the only way to do so is to confront is directly. Now that Atlas has re-entered her life, she is ready to remember how he left it all those years ago in hopes it will help her make sense of her present situation.
Themes
Lily wrote to Ellen that her birthday was the best and then the worst day of her life. She was excited to see Atlas after months of missing him. When he crawled through her window, she could tell that he had put on weight and was in a better headspace than she had ever seen him. They talked for hours. Atlas told her that he had something to tell her. He explained that he had planned to kill himself the night he found the abandoned house. Before he could, he spotted her across the street in the window. He told Lily that she had saved his life, then he kissed the spot on her shoulder he favored.
Lily’s relief at seeing that Atlas is healthy demonstrates that her care for his wellbeing clearly trumps her sadness at missing him. Lily is shocked to learn that before she even knew Atlas existed or tried to help him, her existence had given him renewed hope when he was in utter despair. His love for her is not about what she can do for him; he loves her for existing just as she is. Again, Atlas kisses the part of Lily’s shoulder that will later bear a tattoo in the shape of the heart he carved her. It is his kisses that first imbue that spot with significance, but his lips are not the last ones that leave a mark there.
Themes
Atlas also told Lily the night of her birthday that he was able to join the military earlier than he previously thought he could, but he had to see her first. Because he’d be gone for years, he didn’t want her to wait for him. He promised he would find her if his life improved enough for him to deserve her. Lily promised in return that if he didn’t find her, she’d come find him. Atlas responded that she could always find him in Boston, “where everything is better.” In the entry, Lily implies that they had sex.
While Atlas told Lily he saved her just by existing, his promise indicates that he didn’t think he deserved to be loved in return for the same reason. He seemed to see himself as inferior to Lily. Because Atlas believed Boston was a place where things are better, he hoped that would be a place where he could improve himself enough to deserve Lily. For Lily and Atlas, Boston has been an idealized future realm where it would be possible to meet on equal footing, unburdened by their childhood hardships. Lily’s insistence that she would come for Atlas either way shows she truly didn’t care about Atlas improving himself at all; she wanted him the way he was then.
Themes
After, they laid on her bed together, and Atlas told her that he loved her. Lily knew that he wasn’t only telling her that he was in love with her; he loved her in a more elemental way. Lily reflected in her diary that people are like waves of different magnitudes that come and go like tides. Bigger waves leave more evidence on the sand. When Atlas told her he loved her, Lily understood that he was saying that she had been a massive wave that had shifted his beach forever. Atlas then gave her a birthday present: a Boston magnet that said, “Where everything is better.”
The “Better in Boston” magnet comes to signify Lily and Atlas’s whole notion of the future, one where they are happy and successful and, most importantly, together. By never getting rid of the magnet, adult Lily never fully lets go of the hope it symbolizes—even after she falls in love with another man. Regardless of what the teenagers hoped would happen or what does happen in the future, they agreed that loving each other changed both of them irrevocably.
Themes
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Lily’s father ruined her birthday when he barged into her room after hearing her talking to someone. He went after Atlas with a baseball bat, breaking bones with each swing. When the police arrived, Atlas was so bloody that Lily could hardly recognize him. She hadn’t seen him since that night. In town, people had continued to gossip about that night, believing her father was a hero for saving Lily from a homeless guy. At the end of her letter, Lily told Ellen that she needed to stop writing for a while because she reminds Lily too much of Atlas.
Though Atlas was already committed to leaving for the military, Lily’s father steals their meaningful last moments from them. Like always, he faced no consequences for the harm he has caused others.
Themes
There is no follow up in the journal after this letter—Lily never wrote to Ellen again. Atlas never spoke to her after that night, either, though she knew he’d survived and joined the military. Sitting in her room, Lily remembers missing him all through college, eventually realizing that he wasn’t a “full circle” kind of love, but one that came and went like the tide. After, she tattooed an open heart on her shoulder where he used to kiss her. When Lily saw Atlas at Bib’s, it brought back her unresolved feelings. It made her realize that she would always love him, because he was a big wave for her, too. But that tide has retreated, and she has been swept away on Ryle’s tidal wave instead.
This journal entry at last clarifies why Lily has carried so much regret and hurt over Atlas into adulthood. In part, she was wracked with guilt for the horrible role her father played in the violent ending of their relationship. Perhaps more painful for Lily, however, is the fact that Atlas never kept his promise to find her. Her tattoo served as a way to commemorate the great love they had for each other, honoring it even if it never returned to her. What Lily never anticipated was that Atlas would return to her—but only after she’d chosen someone else.
Themes
