All the Bright Places Themes

Finch has undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and while he seems to recognize his disease on some level—he's not surprised when the school counselor brings it up—he never acknowledges the possibility...

When it comes to families, sometimes the grass is greener on the other side. Violet envies Finch's freedom, while he's jealous of her closeness with her mom and dad. Violet's parents are caring, bu...

Violet and Finch are guilty as sin. Or at least they feel that way. In truth, they're just kids trying to cope with big, adult-sized problems. Violet has to deal with her sister's death, for which...

Throughout the novel, Violet and Finch each search for a sense of identity. Violet lost hers in the car accident that killed her sister. For her, Eleanor was a point of comparison—someone to defi...

There's a lot of death in All the Bright Places. (Violet lost her sister, then Finch…and even when Finch was alive, he thought about death all the time.) There's death on pretty much every page,...

All the Bright Places is heavy on quotes from famous writers who killed themselves. (Bit of a downer, that.) On the other hand, its unofficial mascot is Dr. Seuss, whose book Oh, the Places You'll...

In All the Bright Places, change is arguably good, or bad, or both. (Part of what makes it so confusing is that most of the good changes stem from some sort of bad change.) Only one thing's for sur...

The plot of the book is structured around Finch and Violet's "wanders." Long story short: their U.S. Geography teacher has asked the class to pair off, visit wondrous sites around their home state,...