76 pages • 2 hours read
Gabrielle ZevinElsewhere
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Accepting Loss and Embracing Change
Like many coming-of-age novels, Elsewhere depicts its protagonist’s first real experience of loss; however, it inverts the usual formula by centering not on the death of a loved one, but rather on the death of the protagonist. The immediate effect of this is to dramatically heighten the sense of grief Liz experiences, since her sudden death involves the loss of everyone she knows, her home, her daily routines, and (as she eventually learns) her plans for the future. Here is how she describes the experience of watching her own funeral: “In a way, it feels more like she is still alive and the only guest at the collective funeral for everyone she has ever known” (32).
This emphasis on loss may initially seem unexpected, given the prominent role reincarnation plays in the novel; since the souls of all people (and animals) are constantly cycling from Elsewhere to Earth and back again, no one is ever truly and permanently gone. However, as Zevin depicts it, this process underscores rather than resolves the anxieties many people feel in regard to mortality. Zevin implies that people don’t typically retain memories of their past lives, so while their consciousness may be eternal, each identity they assume is finite, lasting for only one cycle through Earth and Elsewhere. Thus, when Liz is reborn in the novel’s Epilogue, she “is Liz and not Liz at the same time” (277). Relatedly, the timing of a person’s death may mean that they will never see their loved ones again, at least in their present form; because Liz dies so young herself, her Release back to Earth takes place long before her parents or brother arrive in Elsewhere.
As a result, life on Elsewhere raises the same kinds of existential questions that life on Earth does. On the night of her arrival, Liz angrily asks Betty what the point of life on Elsewhere is if “Everything is just erased” by the time a person reverts to infancy (54)—a question one could also pose of aging and death. There are no easy answers to Liz’s frustration, though one important lesson she learns over the course of the novel is that there’s nothing to be gained from railing against the nature of her existence, because “[I]t [is], after all, the only life she ha[s]” (274).
However, Elsewhere also implies that what humans experience as loss is usually not loss in the strictest sense, but rather change; transience, after all, is a function of human existence even without taking death into account. The struggle to preserve things exactly as they are is nearly always a futile one. Although Zevin suggests that it’s natural to grieve what’s left behind when our lives change, it’s also important to recognize the possibilities inherent to these moments—so, for example, musician Curtis reinvents himself as a fisherman after arriving in Elsewhere, and Owen and Emily decide to let go of the relationship they enjoyed on Earth in favor of new romances.
In fact, Elsewhere ultimately (and paradoxically) hints that it’s only by embracing some degree of change that we can hold on to what is most lasting and important in life: love, joy, a sense of purpose, etc. A concrete example of this comes in the form of Liz’s pocket watch, which is a complex symbol variously associated with love, time’s passage, and living in the moment. Liz “loses” this watch following her death, only to later “regain” it in the form of the wristwatch Owen gives her—an object that carries the same symbolic meanings as her former watch, and which (significantly) Liz only receives after she has fully accepted her new life in Elsewhere.
The Power of Love in All Its Forms
One of the most disappointing aspects of aging backwards, as Liz initially sees it, is that she won’t have the chance to fall in love; at 15, she has never had a real romantic relationship, and now she expects that she never will. This assumption proves to be somewhat incorrect, given the love that develops between Liz and Owen. Nevertheless, the relationship between the two is unconventional by the usual standards, with Owen initially resisting any kind of physical intimacy due to the fact that—while close in physical age—he and Liz have very different levels of life experience. Although the two do eventually kiss, the novel implies they never have sex; by the time Liz is emotionally an adult, both she and Owen are physically children. Eventually, any romantic elements of the relationship fall away and their interactions come to resemble those of childhood friends or siblings, with Owen (now six) feigning annoyance when Liz (four) demands his attention: “Oh, all right. […] Honestly, Liz, you’re such a bore” (268).
The fact that Liz and Owen never have the kind of relationship they might have had on Earth is a source of some grief to Liz; after watching Zooey’s wedding, she wistfully remarks, “Sometimes I wish I could get a white dress” (254). On the other hand, as Liz also notes, she and Owen would likely never have met on Earth, and if they had, there would have been a 20-year age difference between them. Furthermore, as Owen observes, physical intimacy is not the defining feature of love: “[I]ntimacy doesn’t have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together” (186). In fact, the novel suggests that a focus on romantic love can itself be limiting, given the many different but rewarding forms love can take. The peculiarities of life in Elsewhere forcibly underscore this point, as couples like Owen and Emily, who were once the same age, are reunited at wildly different stages of their lives. Although Emily assures Owen that she “will always love [him]” (213), she soon comes to realize that that love can no longer take the same form it did on Earth; indeed, by the end of the novel, she is acting as Owen’s babysitter rather than his wife.
As with human life more broadly, Elsewhere therefore depicts love as transient in some ways, but enduring in others. It also suggests that love in any form is something to be celebrated for its ability to give life meaning; as Liz reflects while lying on the ocean floor, “If no one knows you’re alive, no one you love, you may as well be dead” (224). In fact, if death is (as Aldous puts it) “a state of mind” (86), it is love that often brings people “back to life” in Elsewhere: Liz’s arrival marks the end of Betty’s formerly isolated and lonely existence (even paving the way for Betty’s marriage to Curtis), Liz’s love and Jen’s companionship allow Owen to stop “wasting [his] death” (169), and it is the sight of Owen’s boat that gives Liz the strength to swim to the surface after her botched Release.
The Role of Choice and Agency in Human Life
Judging by the dream she has her first night in Elsewhere, Liz at one point had fairly detailed plans for her future; in her dream, she attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completes a degree in biology, and enrolls in a veterinary school in Florida, where she meets the man she will eventually marry. Liz’s sudden death upends these plans, but it also undermines her faith in her very ability to shape her own future. It isn’t simply that she “didn’t choose to die” (117), but rather that the abrupt and random nature of her death seems to trump the very idea of free will; as Liz sees it, there’s little point in striving for anything if all her efforts can be undone in a moment by something beyond her control. The particular nature of existence in Elsewhere also factors significantly into Liz’s pessimism. Because she knows from the beginning exactly how much time she has left on Elsewhere, Liz feels as though her entire existence there is “predetermined” (211).
The reality, however, is that it’s difficult for people to actually live as though their choices don’t matter. Although the thought of pursuing any course of action “when she’d just be going back to Earth in fifteen years anyway” initially strikes Liz as pointless (85), doing nothing proves even less satisfying, as she begins to realize while working to bring her killer to justice: “She now experiences the renewed energy of a person with a mission. […] For the first time since arriving in Elsewhere, Liz feels almost, well, alive” (118). Nevertheless, in the long run, this kind of negative purpose also proves inadequate; it’s only when Liz forgives Amadou and begins her “avocation” at the DDA that she begins to find happiness.
In fact, the rationale behind Elsewhere’s encouragement of these avocations is itself notable. As Aldous describes it, an avocation “is something a person does to make his or her soul complete” (74); the emphasis, in other words, is not simply on the real-world impact of a person’s work (though that of course may matter), but also on how the work affects and transforms the person engaged in it. This is significant, because the one area of life that is unquestionably in an individual’s power to control is themself. Liz initially struggles with this idea, often claiming she has “no choice” but to respond to events with anger or despair. As Curtis notes, however, people are themselves malleable and can grow and change if they desire to do so: “[J]ust because someone did something before doesn’t mean they have to do it still” (212).
Liz reaches the same conclusion during her first Release, recognizing that her happiness doesn’t depend on Owen, or in fact on anyone or anything other than herself. As a result, in the aftermath of her rescue, Liz commits herself to appreciating all that’s good in her life rather than wallowing in what’s bad; she decides, for instance, to forgive Owen more or less immediately, realizing that by holding on to feelings of anger or betrayal she would only be limiting the amount of time they have together, and thus hurting herself. Ultimately, then, Elsewhere suggests that the most consequential decision each person has to make is how to respond to the mixed joys and pains of life: whether to dwell on the bad or whether to recognize that “[h]appiness is a choice” (240).
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