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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Still Alice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ambition and Success
Loss of Identity
Illness, Marriage, and Family
Alzheimer’s, Quality of Life, and Happiness
Summary
Analysis
Alice gets on her computer after receiving a concerned phone call from Cathy, who wanted to know if Alice was okay because she hadn’t attended their support group for a while. Alice tells her to let everyone know she’s okay but knows that she had “said a tearful good-bye to okay some time ago.” She opens her email and is overwhelmed by the number of unread messages, so she closes it.
Alice has stopped going to the support group she started, which means she is now dropping the new connections she made with Cathy and the others. This also means that she is losing a newer part of her identity that she had begun forming when she first met them all, signifying that she has essentially reached the point of no longer being able to develop emotionally or relationally.
Themes
Alice notices the folders saved on her desktop screen and decides to click on one. After briefly viewing the “Alice” one, she opens the folder titled “Butterfly.” Inside it is a message saying she wrote the following when she was “of sound mind.” Addressing herself, the letter tells Alice she “can no longer trust [her] own judgment,” but can trust the version of her that wrote the letter. The letter tells Alice she has “lived an extraordinary life,” and although the “end” that she’s chosen “is tragic,” her life has not been so. The letter tells Alice to get a bottle of pills from the back of a table in her room and take them all with water right away without telling anyone.
Alice’s surprise at finding the letter to herself means she truly had forgotten her suicide plan, and even now it’s clear that she doesn’t understand that the directions at the end of the letter are for a suicide. The assurance in the beginning of the letter that it was written when Alice was “of sound mind” shows her early anxiety to assert the fact that she was capable of making this decision for herself, even though at the time she was also losing her sense of self and place at Harvard. However, there is no longer any trace of that anxiety, meaning that Alice has undeniably reached the point where she is no longer “of sound mind.”
Themes
Alice doesn’t remember writing the letter but is proud that she had once been able to do so. Alice follows the directions to go upstairs to her room but forgets what she’s doing up there. She goes back to reread the letter and then returns to dig through her drawer but is unable to find what she’s looking for. Suddenly, John comes in and tells her he needs to go to the office. He gives her, her usual medication and leaves. Alice lies on her bed “feeling sad and proud.”
Alice’s failure to commit suicide is a product of her inability to remember directions or what to do, something for which her old self failed to account. The “sad and proud” feelings she experiences after John leaves are due to the recollection that she had once been able to write a letter and because she has taken her pills, apparently believing they were the ones to which the letter was referring.
Themes
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John gives Alice a robe, hood, and cap to put on. Alice asks where they’re going, and he explains it’s time for the Harvard Commencement and has to explain to her what “commencement” means. Once they arrive at Harvard and enter the area where the ceremony will take place, Alice remembers that she’s done this before. She sits with John and they listen to an actor deliver a speech. The ceremony goes on “for longer than Alice cared for,” but is soon over and John takes her to a nearby building where John says they’ll see Dan receive his PhD.
This commencement will be the final one Alice attends as a professor (shown by her hood, cap, and robe) because, after this, she will no longer have Dan to advise in his research since he is receiving his PhD. Despite her initial confusion, enough of Alice’s former identity exists to give her the vague feeling of having been in this place at a ceremony before.
Themes
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Alice looks around at the room of people. She doesn’t recognize anyone in particular but does “recognize the emotion and the energy in the room.” She realizes that this is “something she knew” and understood, “although she couldn’t remember the details.” Still, she knows “it had been rich and worthwhile.”
Alice no longer has a definite idea of who she really was even a year before. The deep sense of satisfaction she feels, that it “had been rich and worthwhile,” reflects the pride she still has in herself and in her successes even though she can’t remember exactly what they were.
Themes
John points out Dan to Alice when Dan goes up on stage to get his diploma and Alice “applaud[s] him, this student of hers whom she had no memory of.” Once the ceremony is over, Dan finds Alice and reminds her who he is. Alice congratulates him. Dan tells her he feels “so lucky to have been your student” and that she is the reason he chose to study linguistics. He thanks her for her “guidance and wisdom” and tells her she was the best teacher he’s ever had. Alice thanks him for saying all that and is “glad to know that [he’ll] remember these things about [her].” A man and two women come over to them and pass out glasses of “bubbly white wine,” and they all toast Dan.
Alice believed her most important role was that of a professor because she had the “opportunity” to inspire the next generation, and Dan’s speech to her proves that she succeeded in doing just that. Although she doesn’t fully understand it, Alice appreciates that Dan will remember her for who she was. In Dan’s case, at least, even Alice’s worsening condition has not tarnished the reputation she worked so hard and for so long to create.
Themes
As they walk away from the event, someone calls to John and he lets go of Alice’s hand to talk to them. Alice, however, keeps walking. Suddenly, Alice feels her hood “pulled […] tight around her throat” and is “jerked backward.” She falls onto her back and a man bends down to ask if she’s okay. She says she’s not and the man tells her she nearly walked into traffic. The man helps Alice up and asks if she can walk. She says she can and “walk[s] home with the kind stranger who had saved her life.”
Perhaps due to the surprise of being suddenly pulled back, Alice forgets who John is after the graduation ceremony, recognizing him only as a “kind stranger” instead of her husband. This means that Alice is no longer able to recognize anyone in her family.
Themes
