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Part 4, Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory and Meaning
Love and Vulnerability
Freedom
Art, Creativity, and Expression
Wonder and Knowledge
Summary
Analysis
New York City. March 18, 2014. Henry watches Addie restocking shelves at the store. She touches each book so carefully, as though they are her “friends,” which he supposes they are: they are part of her story. A woman comes to the register. When she talks to Henry, her eyes are clouded over and shining. Henry wonders what the woman sees.
Addie’s tender love for the books she shelves reaffirms how important art, storytelling, and knowledge are to her. In place of human connection, she’s had to rely on books and art to make her life meaningful over the years.
Themes
Between customers, Addie asks Henry about his photography; she tells him he’s very good. Henry explains that to him, photography is “a very convincing lie.” As an example, he cites a photo he and his family took when Henry was young. They’d all been fighting up until the photo was taken—the whole day was a mess—but in the photo, they all look so happy. Addie asks why Henry stopped taking photos. He doesn’t answer her question. Inwardly, he considers that he stopped “Because time doesn’t work like photos.” It’s always moving forward, but photos are frozen in time. Henry raises his cell phone camera to Addie, and she reminds him it won’t work—she only ever appears as a blur.
This passage further develops the connection between art, memory, and meaning. Henry, citing a misleading family photo, argues that photography is merely “a very convincing lie.” By contrast, Addie has always found photography to create and enhance meaning, as with her father’s woodworking, which displayed the inner life of her otherwise silent, unassuming father. Finally, this passage also proposes a relationship between photography and time. Part of the reason that Henry finds photography deceptive is because it pretends that a person can freeze time, but in reality, time keeps barreling forward, beyond anyone’s ability to stop or control.
Themes
