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Themes
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Adoration of Jenna Fox, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Adoration of Jenna Fox suggests that a person’s identity is defined by relationships with other people, not by that person’s physical body or even memories. This science-fiction novel’s protagonist, Jenna Fox, suffered such an extreme car accident that her biotech-pioneer father was only able to salvage 10 percent of her brain. He rebuilt the rest of her body using prostheses and Bio Gel, a neurochip-dense goo that can mimic and rebuild human organs. At the novel’s beginning, Jenna has been so traumatized by her accident and physical rebuilding that she can’t remember much of her life, including her father, her mother Claire, or her grandmother Lily. Early in the novel, Jenna worries that she’s a different person than the “old Jenna” because she’s missing memories, while later, she worries that she’s a different person because so much of her body has been replaced. Yet ultimately, the novel suggests that Jenna re-becomes the “old Jenna” by rebuilding her old relationships. After Jenna wakes from her coma, she reflexively calls her grandmother “Lily,” though prior to the accident she called her grandmother “Nana.” This change highlights the new coldness between post-accident Jenna and Lily, who is also unsure whether the rebuilt Jenna really counts as her granddaughter. Yet as the novel progresses, Jenna and Lily rebuild their relationship, leading Jenna to feel more like herself. Similarly, when Jenna realizes that her parents are using technology to keep alive the minds of her old friends Kara and Locke in a kind of torturous suspended animation, so that they can serve as witnesses that Jenna wasn’t criminally responsible for the car accident that killed them and maimed Jenna, Jenna resolves to free them. By freeing them, Jenna proves her loyalty to her old friends and thus her continuity with “old Jenna.” Yet at the same time, Jenna’s identity evolves as she makes new friends and gains a boyfriend, Ethan, after her accident. Thus, The Adoration of Jenna Fox shows how individual identities are fundamentally dependent on interpersonal relationships.
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Identity and Relationships ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Identity and Relationships appears in each chapter of The Adoration of Jenna Fox. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Identity and Relationships Quotes in The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Below you will find the important quotes in The Adoration of Jenna Fox related to the theme of Identity and Relationships.
Pages 3–91
Quotes
I used to be someone.
Someone named Jenna Fox.
That’s what they tell me. But I am more than a name. More than they tell me. More than the facts and statistics they fill me with. More than the video clips they make me watch.
More. But I’m not sure what.
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What kind of person was Jenna Fox that she didn’t have any friends?
Was she someone I even want to remember?
Everyone should have at least one friend.
I don’t know if I will ever remember Jenna. The Jenna I was, at least. Father seems to think I will. Mother desperately wants me to. But letting go of something old and building something new that is all my own feels good. I want more of this feeling.
“And your old life? Do you miss it?”
“Parts. Mostly I regret that I never saw my parents again.”
It finally stops on my face. It rests there. Caressing. Watching. Watching what? The enthusiasm? The ruddy cheeks? The anticipation? Watching all the breaths, heartbeats, and hopes of Matthew and Claire Fox? For a moment, I can see the weight of it on Jenna’s face. My face.
“It was a private journey as much as a public one. He was searching for his personal essence as much as he was making a political statement.”
“He’s missing something. I mean, really missing something[.]”
Pages 92–190
Quotes
I’ve heard about sociopaths, people who connect with no one but themselves and their own self-interests. That would be Dane.
“They aren’t perfect, but none of us are ever exactly what we want to be, right?”
[T]hat day almost two years ago, Kara talked me into the red skirt. She was right. It was a change I needed. What happened to that red skirt?
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Is there such a thing? A real Jenna? Or was the old me always waiting to be someone else, too?
Without knowing it, she called me a lab pet. Why am I so drawn to someone who could destroy me? Why do I need her to be my friend?
The dictionary says my identity should be all about being separate or distinct, and yet it feels like it is so wrapped up in others.
Pages 191–265
Quotes
I decide that sometimes definitions are wrong. Even if they’re written in a dictionary. Identities aren’t always separate and distinct. Sometimes they are wrapped up with others. Sometimes, for a few minutes, maybe they can even be shared. And if I am ever fortunate enough to return to Mr. Bender’s garden, I wonder if the birds will see that piece of him that is wrapped up in me.
All of your pieces fill up other people’s holes.
But they don’t fill
your own.
Would the old Jenna have jeopardized her future for the sake of someone else?
“How can you know?” I ask.
“Some things aren’t meant to be known. Only believed.”
