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Themes and Colors
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.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue explores the intersection between creativity, expression, and meaning. Throughout the novel, Addie struggles to make her mark on the world when a Faustian bargain for immortality comes with one unexpected and exceedingly frustrating caveat: Addie will live an invisible life in which the people she encounters will immediately forget her the moment she leaves the room, and the words she writes will disappear the moment she puts pen to paper. Addie cannot tell the story of her life, nor can she speak her name aloud. Under these conditions, Addie’s life becomes inexpressible and meaningless. In time, Addie finds ways to circumvent her curse of invisibility: she becomes a muse to various artists throughout history, thus allowing some essence—some “idea”—of herself to come through in the artworks and songs she inspires. After 300 years of immortality, Addie meets Henry Strauss, whose own Faustian bargain enables him to remember Addie and absorb the facts of her past. Henry writes down the stories Addies shares with him, ultimately turning these collected stories into a coherent narrative that gives weight, meaning, and context to Addie’s otherwise invisible life. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue explores how storytelling, expression, and creativity have the unique ability to make even a life like Addie’s invisible (and therefore, supposedly, meaningless) one meaningful.
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Art, Creativity, and Expression ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Art, Creativity, and Expression appears in each part of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Art, Creativity, and Expression Quotes in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Below you will find the important quotes in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue related to the theme of Art, Creativity, and Expression .
Part 1, Chapter 4
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Her mother wishes she was more like Isabelle Therault, sweet and kind and utterly incurious, content to keep her eyes down upon her knitting instead of looking up at clouds, instead of wondering what’s around the bend, over the hills.
But Adeline does not know how to be like Isabelle.
She does not want to be like Isabelle.
She wants only to go to Le Mans, and once there, to watch the people and see the art all around, and taste the food, and discover things she hasn’t heard of yet.
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Part 1, Chapter 13
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This is how she would remember him. Not by the sad unknowing in his eyes, or the grim set of his jaw as he led her to church, but by the things he loved. By the way he showed her how to hold a stick of charcoal, coaxing shapes and shades with the weight of her hand. The songs and stories, the sights from the five summers she went with him to market, when Adeline was old enough to travel, but not old enough to cause a stir.
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Part 2, Chapter 2
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Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?
Part 3, Chapter 9
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Mischief glints in those green eyes. “I think you’ll find my word won’t fade as fast as yours.” He shrugs. “They will not remember you, of course. But ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root.”
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Part 4, Chapter 11
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“Three hundred years,” she whispers. “And you can still find something new.” When they step out the other side, blinking in the afternoon light, she is already pulling him on, out of the Sky and on to the next archway, the next set of doors, eager to discover whatever waits beyond.
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Part 5, Chapter 7
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Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.
Because two blocks away, in that small studio over the café, there is an artist, and on one of his pages, there is a drawing, and it is of her. And now Addie closes her eyes, and tips her head back, and smiles, hope swelling in her chest. A crack in the walls of this unyielding curse. She thought she’d studied every inch, but here, a door, ajar onto a new and undiscovered room.
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