Ignite Me

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2014

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-11

Chapters 12-32

Chapters 33-45

Chapters 46-65

Chapters 66-78

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Juliette’s Hair

In Shatter Me, Juliette regularly uses her hair as a means to hide her face, a protective measure she deploys during a portion of her narrative where she is frightened of nearly everything and everyone around her. In Unravel Me, she regularly wears her hair in an elastic band—a simple device whose loss she laments several times in Ignite Me. Pulled back from her face, her hair is less notable to Juliette, and therefore less significant in the narrative. In Ignite Me, however, Juliette begins to dwell on the ways that her hair isn’t a neutral feature but rather a negative one that she perceives as a burden. Early in the text, she comments, “My hair is too heavy; it’s begun to feel like it’s suffocating me” (26). This observation about her hair corresponds with her determination to kill Anderson and defeat The Reestablishment, an important decision in her character arc. The idea that her hair, which she once used to hide herself away from others, has begun to feel suffocating, implies that she no longer wishes or needs to hide and is stepping into her own as a both a person and a leader of the resistance. Tahereh Mafi frames this shifting perspective on her hair as inimical to her personal growth.

Warner’s Clothes

Juliette’s observation, early in Ignite Me, that Warner has a “[s]oft spot for fashion” (32) significantly contributes the reframing of Warner’s beauty—which Juliette previously described as icy and cruel—to something that indicates his deeper emotions. As with Juliette’s hair, Mafi uses a physical attribute of Warner to depict not only his interiority, but to invite readers to reimagine something previously presumed true about him, signaling his evolution. Warner’s having a “soft spot” for clothing reframes Juliette’s understanding of the clothing he offered her in Shatter Me (dresses, which she presumed were to reduce any opportunity of escape due to impracticality) as a kindness rather than a cruelty; she now sees Warner himself as soft beneath his hard exterior. Additionally, the conversation between the volumes in the series in regard to their recurring motifs underscores the notion that the trilogy, for all it is contained in three volumes, is really one continuous story about Juliette’s reclamation of her power.

Doors

In Ignite Me, Mafi uses doors as a motif to mirror the emotional connections between the characters. Juliette routinely encounters two kinds of doors: those that have been left ajar and those that need to be knocked down. In the text, doors left ajar represent the potential for reconciliation or emotional intimacy, though this potential is not guaranteed. When Juliette visits Adam’s apartment after learning that her Omega Point friends have survived, she and Kenji must bypass a door that has been knocked out of its frame and thus hangs imperfectly, forcing the Omega Point survivors to regularly reconstruct and deconstruct a makeshift barricade. The unwieldiness (and inefficacy, given how easily Warner breaks into the apartment chapters later) of this barricade suggests that a door left open wishes, narratively speaking, to remain open. Indeed, Juliette is mostly greeted with happy welcomes from her friends, who are glad to see her alive, with Adam as a stark outlier. The door between Warner’s office and bedroom (where Juliette sleeps) similarly indicates the shifting of emotional closeness between the two. When they are getting along, the door is frequently ajar. When Warner seeks space, he keeps the door firmly closed.

Mafi represents the secrets of Warner’s past specifically as hiding behind blue doors, which Juliette must (emotionally or physically) knock down for the two to progress toward their future together. The first of these is the blue front door of Warner’s mother’s house. When Juliette enters, she finds Warner overcome with grief at his mother’s death. His inability to hide his vulnerable side in the wake of such emotional turmoil leads to greater closeness between the two; Juliette shows Warner he can trust her with his feelings. Anderson, Warner’s father, is likewise located behind a blue door during the final battle. Juliette must physically battle her way through this door, mirroring the physical defeat (killing Anderson) needed to safeguard her “happy ending” with Warner.