43 pages • 1 hour read
Everything, Everything
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“Geography”-“This Life”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“Geography,” “Map of Despair,” “Life Is Short™,” “Select All,” “Delete,” and “Pretending” Summary
Madeline dreams of being in a colorful field of poppies with figures dressed in black who look like Olly and are wearing gas masks coming toward her, crushing the poppies underfoot. She sketches a hypothetical map of her heart, with features like “Mountains of Misery” and “Depression Foothills.” She reads several books and plays that cause her to conclude that “everything is nothing” (250). She deletes all of Olly’s emails, the most recent of which she left unread. Madeline regains her health within a month of coming home from Hawaii but is numb and disillusioned with the ideas of happiness, meaning, and love in life. She goes through the motions in her relationship with her mom and deletes Olly’s emails—which eventually stop coming—without reading them. Pauline decides to rehire Carla, feeling that Madeline has learned her lesson about the dangers of the outside world.
“Reunion,” “Neighborhood Watch #3,” and “Five Syllables” Summary
Carla returns to care for Madeline and lets her cry about Olly and hurting her mom for an hour. Madeline is afraid that Pauline hates her for what she did in running away to Hawaii, but Carla says that mothers can never hate their daughters.
A moving van comes to Olly’s house, and he, Kara, and their mom furtively move out without his dad’s knowledge. As he’s leaving, Olly looks up to Madeline’s window and waves, but she ducks back behind the curtain. A month later Olly’s dad moves out too. Madeline reads some of Olly’s emails, which are limericks about her. He also writes that he told his mom about Madeline and her courage to live her life despite impossible odds, and that her example might have helped his mom find the courage to finally leave her abusive husband.
“His Last Letter Is Haiku,” “Here and Now,” and “For My Eyes Only” Summary
Olly writes Madeline one last email in haiku form saying that he loves her, and Madeline receives an email from the doctor who treated her at the hospital in Maui. The doctor writes that she doesn’t believe Madeline has or ever had SCID but instead suffered a cardiac inflammation from a viral infection while in Hawaii. The infection was likely brought on because Madeline’s immune system has been weakened without exposure to the outside world. The doctor includes test results in the email and urges Madeline to get other medical opinions about her health and not to solely trust her mother, who is too emotionally involved with Madeline to treat her objectively.
“Protection,” “Madeline’s Dictionary,” and “Identity” Summary
Madeline immediately confronts Pauline about the doctor’s email. Pauline insists the doctor’s suspicions are false because SCID is such a rare disease and the other doctor doesn’t have access to Madeline’s full medical history. At first Madeline believes her, and Pauline comforts her daughter for being disappointed about the news, but Madeline begins to suspect that her mother may have made up the diagnosis after all. She gives the email to Carla, who reviews it and the test results and says she has also suspected that Pauline’s grief over losing her husband and son led to Madeline being falsely diagnosed with SCID. She promises to help Madeline get more information about her health.
“Proof of Life,” “Outside,” “Fairy Tales,” and “The Void” Summary
Madeline sneaks down to her mom’s office in the middle of the night to search through old files for information on her diagnosis. She finds that Pauline visited four specialists when Madeline was a baby, after a virus put her in the hospital for a few days. All the specialists concluded that Madeline was healthy, but Pauline convinced herself that Madeline had SCID. Pauline finds Madeline, and Madeline again confronts her about being sick. She shows Pauline the file with her early records in it, and Pauline mistakenly thinks that there must have been evidence of Madeline’s disease. Madeline knows, at that point, that Pauline’s mental anguish over the family’s tragedy led her to invent the diagnosis and that Madeline is in fact healthy.
“Beginnings and Ends,” “After the Death Of,” “One Week A.D.,” “Two Weeks A.D.,” “Three Weeks A.D.,” “Four Weeks A.D.,” “Five Weeks A.D.,” “and “Six Weeks A.D.” Summary
Carla sends Madeline’s blood to a SCID specialist, who examines it and then meets with Madeline. The doctor tells her that she doesn’t have any signs of SCID and that she doesn’t have the disease. Like the Maui doctor, he believes she had a viral infection in Hawaii and that her immune system is likely compromised because of her lack of exposure to the outside world, not because of any underlying health condition. He sets up weekly appointments and helps her start easing into exposure to the outside world. Madeline is angry at and distant from her mom, but at Carla’s urging she remains home for the time being, making changes to the house to help her begin venturing out into the world. She contemplates reaching out to Olly to tell him the news but doesn’t.
“Madeline’s Mom,” “Flowers for Algernon,” “The Gift, and “The End Is the Beginning Is the End” Summary
Pauline goes to a therapist to try and work through her trauma, but Madeline is still angry with her mother and ignores her at the house. Now that everyone knows Madeline isn’t sick, Carla resigns as her nurse. Pauline brings Madeline a cell phone as an apologetic present. Madeline goes up to the roof of Olly’s old house and admires his orrery again.
“Future Perfect #2,” “Takeoff,” “Forgiveness,” and “Life Is Short™” Summary
Madeline decides to go to New York to find Olly. Pauline is upset that she’s leaving but allows it, and Madeline’s doctor urges caution while her immune system is so fragile. Madeline is determined to go because of her love for Olly, and she reads The Little Prince on the plane, reading in it a message of triumphal love that reinforces her decision to go to New York.
“This Life” Summary
Madeline leaves her copy of The Little Prince conspicuously placed on the shelf of a used bookstore near Olly’s house and texts him instructions on how to find it. She hides in the shelves nearby when he shows up and watches him find it, open it, and read the “reward if found” message on the inside cover, which promises herself as the reward if found. Madeline emerges from her hiding place, and the two reunite, ready to continue their relationship.
“Geography”-“This Life” Analysis
Pauline’s influence on Madeline wanes as Madeline realizes that her mother’s own emotional issues following the death of her husband and son led her mother to believe Madeline had SCID. By the time she leaves for New York, Madeline’s coming-of-age journey is complete, and she has new adult relationships with the authority figures in her life. Although Pauline and Madeline’s new doctor are upset about her flying across the country, she overrides their concerns and goes anyway. Carla, a stalwart presence in her childhood and teenage years, moves on to another job after Madeline’s diagnosis is overturned. Madeline has emerged from and been transformed by her coming-of-age journey, and her initiative to go to New York and reconnect with Olly reflects her desire to take the next steps into young adulthood.
The revelation that Madeline does not have SCID, and the overall portrayal of SCID in the book, drew criticism from the SCID community when it was published. The Immune Deficiency Foundation (IDF) released a press statement when the movie adaptation of Everything, Everything was released, stating that SCID patients are almost never confined to their houses and can generally live normal lives with treatment. (“IDF Statement on Everything, Everything.” Immune Deficiency Foundation, 2017.) Although the book makes it clear that Pauline’s mental issues are the cause of Madeline’s confinement, it never explicitly says that even if Madeline did have SCID, she would not have been confined in that way. In other words, the book implies that confinement might have been appropriate if Madeline actually had SCID. Such an omission lessens the severity of Pauline’s unresolved mental issues and self-delusion. As a doctor who researched the disease (as the files in her office imply), Pauline would have understood that confining Madeline was medically inappropriate. Rather than simply convincing herself that Madeline is sick, Pauline deludes herself into thinking both that Madeline is sick and that confinement is the best way to treat the sickness, a distinction the book never acknowledges. This is particularly important because the general public may be unfamiliar with SCID and assume that the medical facts presented in the book are accurate. Moreover, this double deception and the knowledge that she could have lived a normal life even with SCID would amplify Madeline’s resentment toward Pauline, and Yoon may have wanted to avoid portraying such an intense breakdown of the mother-daughter relationship.
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By Nicola Yoon
