The Twelve Steps
Watch Your Step(s)
The central component of A
Million Little Pieces is the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve-Step
Program… and the fact that James finds the whole process an "utter
bullshit fantasy fa...
TV and Food
TV, Dinners
James equates fixation on food and television with drug use.
After all, people use addiction to fill some sort of void in their lives,
right? Well, maybe people can be just as addicted...
The Woods
Walking through Woods
on a Rehab-y Evening
The clinic is surrounded by a forest that seems almost magical
enough to rival the Forbidden
Forest around Hogwarts.
It actually is
kind of forbidden....
Cold and Dark
James equates addiction and despair with cold and darkness.
(How original.) Recovery is a dark process, as we see when James says early on,
"I am an Alcoholic and I am a Drug Addict and I am a Crim...
Black and White
No shades of gray here—in James's mind, everything is either
black or white. He never said he wasn't an extreme dude.
In this book, white often represents something that is clean
and healthy....
Eyes
James uses his eyeballs as a barometer for his recovery. His
eyes signify how his health is coming along, and they also symbolize how he's
able to accept that fact that he is a recovering addict....