54 pages • 1 hour read
The Love of My Afterlife
A 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 Difference Between Living and Surviving
When Delphie arrives in Evermore and Merritt shows her a video of her life, Delphie realizes just how little she has done with her life. When she realizes that her life consists of a basic routine of going to work and staying home alone, Delphie learns that she has only been doing the minimum to survive. Throughout the novel, she begins to see that she never really lived her life. Learning how to enjoy life is the most important lesson that Delphie faces in the novel, though it takes her some time to recognize just how much she was wasting her life before her death. Delphie knows that her life has essentially been on pause since high school when the bullying she experienced caused her to give up many meaningful interests, such as art. She has so little worth living for that when she describes herself, Delphie can only say, “I work at Meyer’s Pharmacy as an assistant and I’m twenty-seven” (105). Her adolescent experience with bullying and her parents’ divorce led Delphie to lose trust in others and actively avoid them, cutting out any meaningful human interaction from her life. When she first returns to Earth, she is so focused on pursuing Jonah that she doesn’t see how little she has been doing with her life. It is not until Jonah rejects her that Delphie admits to herself, “I’ve wasted it. I’ve wasted my life” (197).
However, from this point in the novel, Delphie also begins to reconnect with aspects of life that she enjoys, and she finally feels alive for the first time in years. After a week back on Earth, Delphie reflects on how much her life has improved despite the challenges she is struggling to overcome. Once she comes to this realization, Delphie understands that she does not want to give up the life she has come to enjoy, telling herself, “I might not have much choice in how long I stay alive. But I do have some say in how much life I can pack into the days I have left” (222). Delphie spends what she believes are her final days on Earth doing what makes her happy, and she continues this new trend even when she is brought back to life the second time. At the end of the novel, Delphie learns that this was Merritt’s plan all along; although Merritt believed that Jonah would be a means to an end, she just wanted Delphie to live her life rather than just surviving.
The Importance of Friendship and Community
After Delphie’s traumatic experiences with bullying and her parents’ divorce, she cut off all unnecessary interactions with others. At the beginning of the novel, she rejects a number of people who clearly want to be friends, such as Leanne, Aled, and Frida. Similarly, Delphie never gives Cooper a second chance after having one negative interaction with him. Merritt pities Delphie, who has never been in a relationship and has lived her adult life alone, and she initially claims that this is the reason why she sends Delphie back to Earth. However, a key aspect of Delphie’s learning process is to recognize the importance of friendship and community. Throughout the novel, Delphie has small interactions with people who could become good friends if she would only let them into her life, such as the friendly bartender or the art teacher who notices her talent. However, Delphie is so used to pushing people away that she cannot perceive their intentions as benevolent. This is most true of Delphie’s employer, Leanne, whose friendly invitations to go out for a drink are dismissed because Delphie thinks that Leanne is “suspiciously friendly” (50), and she also wants to avoid potential awkwardness at work. Similarly, when Delphie meets Aled, the librarian, who clearly wants to be her friend, she does everything she can to avoid coming back to the library. These abortive interactions show that Delphie avoids people as a way of protecting herself, and her past experience with Gen Hartley makes her assume that all friendships will end in hurt or betrayal.
As the novel progresses, Delphie begins to see these small acts of kindness as the overtures of friendship that they really are. For example, she is shocked when Leanne and Jan help her with her costume without expecting anything in return, and her new experiences of friendship and community solidify further when she receives overwhelming support during her hospital stay. Delphie recognizes how cruel and dismissive she has been to others, and she begins to accept Jan’s view that humans are “literally built for community” (288). When given another chance at life, Delphie uses her time to build a community for herself and those around her. Her art exhibition and the large crowd that attends illustrate how much Delphie has grown to value the importance of human connection.
Celebrating Life and Appreciating Meaningful Moments
When Mr. Yoon is in the hospital, Delphie cannot help but think how sad it is that so few people know this great man, even though she hardly knows him herself. She begins to sketch him, making her memory of him something tangible that will live on after she is gone. However, in doing so, Delphie is also witnessing Mr. Yoon’s life and preserving his memory, thereby imbuing his life with additional meaning. This idea of “witnessing” a life also becomes prominent when Delphie and Cooper go out for dinner and stumble across a group of friends and family celebrating someone’s birthday. Later, Delphie tells Cooper, “Those guests, friends, family, whatever. They were witnesses to that guy’s life. [The event] meant that [his life] was remembered. That he will be remembered. […] Because he had, you know, witnesses” (233). From this point on, Delphie becomes interested in the idea that life has meaning if it is witnessed by others, and she becomes inspired to throw a party for Mr. Yoon for the same reason.
Remembering the dead also becomes a vital aspect of the novel and is mostly symbolized by Delphie’s emphasis on remembering and honoring Mr. Yoon before he dies. However, this is also an important idea for Cooper and his family, who have conflicting views about keeping the memory of his late sister alive. While Cooper’s parents have no qualms about talking about M, Cooper keeps his own thoughts about his sister hidden, shutting down any attempt at conversation about her. However, Cooper begins to feel some relief when he shares his grief and starts to tell Delphie about M, especially once he has been to Evermore and back. At this same point in time, Delphie is dealing with the possibility that Mr. Yoon’s life will go unwitnessed and unremembered, and with Cooper’s help, she finds a way to ensure that their neighbor’s memory can live on. However, Delphie is also grappling with her own mortality, and in this context, her attempts to make sure that Mr. Yoon’s life is witnessed reveal her own fears that her life may be forgotten. Yet as Delphie later begins to witness the lives of others by creating meaningful portraits of her friends and neighbors, she allows them in turn to witness her life. By the end of the novel, Delphie understands that she does not need to worry about her life lacking meaning or being forgotten, for she is now confident in the community that she has built for herself. The final lines of the novel highlight this shift, for as Delphie sees the friends she has made, she reflects, “I’m surrounded by people [...] who will be a part of those small everyday moments” (305), and she basks in the knowledge that her own life is truly “witnessed” and fully “lived.”
Unlock all 54 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: