52 pages • 1 hour read
Stephanie GarberA Curse for True Love
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Foundations of Power
In A Curse for True Love, Graber uses the characters of Apollo, Aurora, and Evangeline to explore different types of power and consider the various ways power is used. Although they are all powerful characters, the roots of that power differ, as do the ways in which they wield it. Each of the characters uses their power to get what they want, but the foundations of that power prove to be the difference between failure and success.
As a prince, Apollo has the greatest amount of power, and with his royal upbringing, he understands how to use it to his advantage. He also uses it without consideration of the effect on others. For example, in his conversation with the news reporter in Chapter 4, he insists the reporter print Jacks’s misdeeds every day until Jacks is found. Apollo leverages his power to control the reporter, telling him that it’s very important “that you print what I need you to say” (31). Apollo also displays his power with his treatment of Evangeline, justifying violating her memories by convincing himself he has the right because he’s a prince. He wants to marry Evangeline both to build his reputation and because he doesn’t want Jacks to have her, but his abuse of his power, which gets him what he wants in the short term, ultimately leads to his demise. When he pushes the limits of his power too far and drinks from the Tree of Souls, he seals his fate by letting greed get the better of him. Apollo’s character arc illustrates the downside of wielding one’s power unfeelingly and indiscriminately.
While Apollo wields his power directly and bluntly, Aurora’s character offers an example of how power can also be quiet. Instead of demanding respect and forcing people to do her bidding, Aurora uses her power subtly to manipulate people into doing what she wants. Aurora gives Apollo the magic he needs to remove Evangeline’s memories and reinstall himself on the throne, which Apollo takes, believing it will get him everything he wants. However, later he realizes that Aurora has manipulated him and if he doesn’t give her what she wants, she could expose his crimes and destroy everything he worked to build. Like Apollo, however, Aurora’s belief in her right to use her power however she likes leads to her downfall. Where Apollo’s power is based on his princely status, Aurora’s is based on an inflated sense of her own importance. When Jacks rejects her, she loses her power because she no longer believes she can just take what she wants. Aurora’s power is fueled by her ego and when her ego is destroyed, so is her power. Like Apollo, Aurora uses her power to try to control others, ultimately leading to her undoing.
Apollo and Aurora illustrate how power can bring about defeat, but Evangeline’s character arc shows how power, when wielded correctly, can offer success. Throughout the novel, Evangeline’s power rests in her firm belief in a happy ending for herself. Even when she doesn’t remember her past or her love for Jacks, she is always fighting for what she wants. Because her power is based on hope, Evangeline has more control over it. She isn’t dependent on controlling others for her success; instead, she relies on her ability to seek the truth. At the end of the book when she finally kisses Jacks, Evangeline doesn’t fall victim to the curse of his kiss because her power, based on hope, is stronger than any curse. With Evangeline’s character arc, the novel illustrates how to wield power through empathy and understanding. Her success is the result of both the roots of her power and how she uses it, standing in stark contrast to Apollo’s and Aurora’s failures, the result of using their power to control others.
The Effect of Past Experience on Character
The main characters of A Curse for True Love have led very different lives and have, as a result, become very different people based on their individual experiences and understandings of the world. Graber uses the characters of Apollo, Jacks, and Evangeline to explore how their past experiences shape their characters and determine their futures.
Apollo’s personality has been influenced by his royal upbringing; growing up, Apollo internalized the idea that he is innately better and more important than other people, leading him to put his own wellbeing and wants ahead of everyone else’s. As a result, he has not become a great ruler or even one his people care about. In earlier novels in the series, Apollo was content to be handsome and privileged, and his perspective on himself, shaped by his upbringing, remained unchallenged. However, in A Curse for True Love, Apollo’s needs shift—he wants to be remembered and worshipped by his people. He feels it is his right as a prince but comes to understand that the adoration of his people is not his right but must be earned. The realization that his people didn’t care when they believed he was dead is devastating to Apollo. He becomes darker and more dangerous, and his newfound desperation convinces him to make deals with people like Aurora. Apollo has been fundamentally shaped by his royal pedigree, and when he is faced with the reality of others’ views of him, he doesn’t change, but he wields his power differently in an unsuccessful attempt to garner the favor of his people.
Like Apollo, Jacks has a troubled past, but it shaped him differently. While both men had privileged upbringings, Jacks learned that cruelty does not get what he wants. Years ago, Jacks was cursed to kill the girl he loved and then cursed again with a deadly kiss. These curses shifted his perspective on himself and his needs. He is convinced he can’t have love and, as a result, has given up on trying until he meets Evangeline. Because of the way these past experiences shaped him, Jacks pushes her away, believing that doing so is the only way to save her. Jacks’s fear fundamentally shapes both his character and his actions, keeping him rooted in the past, unable to understand how the present is different. He doesn’t recognize these differences, hiding behind the pretense that he doesn’t feel or need love. However, he finally realizes how his love for Evangeline is different when he loses her. He sacrifices his loving heart, believing that desperate actions are necessary to protect the people he loves, but these actions only harm himself and others. Only when Jacks stops lying to himself does he understand how he has let the past shape him, showing how his experiences have twisted his view of the world.
While Jacks’s realization changes him, Evangeline’s arc illustrates how some parts of identity cannot be changed. In Chapter 6 as Evangeline watches the fire blessing for her and Apollo, she muses on whether she would still be in this position if she had her memories and wonders, “[W]ould it really change things if she remembered exactly how she’d gotten here?” (53). In the first book of the series, Once Upon a Broken Heart, Evangeline was poised to live out her days as Apollo’s princess, but in the second book, The Ballad of Never After, Apollo was cursed to hunt her, and she realized she loved Jacks. Thus, her unique experiences in The Ballad of Never After led Evangeline away from being Apollo’s princess. In A Curse for True Love, she once again is aligned with Apollo because he removed her memories, but though she doesn’t remember his treachery, she is still uneasy about marrying him. Apollo removes Evangeline’s memories to try to reshape her experiences to bring her back to him, but it doesn’t work because her experiences, though she doesn’t remember them, still shape her. When Evangeline remembers the truth about Apollo’s treachery, she wants nothing to do with him. Remembering her past experiences and what they’ve taught her makes Evangeline also remember what she wants (Jacks) and doesn’t want (Apollo), showing how her past experiences continue to shape her present. With each of these three characters, Graber shows how past experience determines the present, inescapably shaping one’s character.
The Difference Between Right and Good
Throughout the novel, the characters justify their actions in many ways, most often by thinking those actions are either the right or good thing to do. With the characters of Apollo, Jacks, and Evangeline, Graber explores the intersections between right and good, and where the two concepts diverge.
Evangeline exemplifies what it means to strive to be good. She never makes decisions meant to harm others, even though harm is sometimes done, and she believes in doing what feels right for both herself and others. This is most powerfully illustrated in her fight to reclaim Jacks’s love. Evangeline knows Jacks isn’t necessarily a good person because he has done terrible things to her and others. However, she understands that he does not have to be good to be the right person for her. Despite his flaws and past choices, Evangeline knows he can be good, and that potential makes her believe they are right for each other. Evangeline’s character arc shows where good and right intersect, as well as how they can sometimes be the same.
In contrast with Evangeline, Apollo shows how the wrong motives can make even a good action not right. The novel shows how Apollo’s view of good and right is skewed by exploring his actions through Evangeline’s perspective. In Chapter 33, Evangeline and LaLa discuss Apollo’s actions, and while Evangeline hates him for what he’s done, she also wonders “if in his own way he thinks he’s doing good” (280). Despite what Apollo has done, Evangeline understands that he has acted partly to protect her from Jacks. Thinking back on what Jacks has done to her in the past, she realizes that there is good in Apollo’s actions. However, Apollo also applies his idea of good to a dangerous level, convincing himself that violating Evangeline in the name of doing good is right. Apollo cannot truly do good because he is too self-centered and self-serving to see how his actions harm others. He does the wrong things which, even if done for good reasons, takes away the rightness of his actions. Apollo acts to protect Evangeline from Jacks, but he puts Evangeline in more danger from himself. Even if he is right about the threat Jacks poses, Apollo is not doing good.
Where Apollo shows how wrongness can twist goodness, Jacks highlights the danger of putting what he believes is right over what is good. Throughout the book, Jacks believes he is wrong for Evangeline because he has put her in danger in the past. He decides Evangeline is safer without him and removes himself from her life as much as he can. Jacks doesn’t realize that, in doing so, he takes away Evangeline’s ability to choose what is right for her. By identifying himself as wrong, Jacks keeps himself from seeing the good in himself and how he could be right for Evangeline. He even harms himself by removing his heart in an effort to do the right thing and keep Evangeline safe, not realizing that he puts her in more danger by denying his feelings for her. When Evangeline chooses Jacks at the end of the book, he realizes that he is not wrong just because he’s done bad things; he has done just as much good as bad, and his rightness or wrongness changes from situation to situation. With Jacks’s example, Graber illustrates the subjectivity of good/bad and right/wrong, showing how they are a spectrum, complicating the more straightforward portraits of Evangeline and Apollo.
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