No doubt about it, Eleanor & Park is a heartbreaking story. Even though we know from the first page that these two will be separated by the end, by the time the big goodbye rolls around, we're totally attached to these two characters, and their incredible bravery and pain during their farewell would make even the Grinch's heart explode.
Their all-night drive seems to be one big, extended goodbye: Park "cried into [Eleanor's] hair until he fell asleep" (52.19), and Eleanor "held his beautiful face and kissed him like it was the end of the world" (52.27). This is not a wave and a handshake—this is an emotional supernova.
Park insists it won't be the last time they see each other, because that's what he needs to believe. Eleanor's somehow less optimistic, though, saying, "Life's a bastard" (53.15). Maybe Park, who's endured a lot less trauma than Eleanor, is somehow more naïve? Or maybe he's right, and love will find a way?
Once they go their separate ways, Eleanor and Park cope totally differently. Park writes Eleanor tons of letters and hopes she'll call, but Eleanor can't even read Park's letters, and every time she starts writing to him, she rips up her letter without sending it. It's almost like Eleanor thinks it's easier to lose Park if she cuts herself off completely. Whatever the reason, it's impossible not to feel sympathy for Park as he waits for letters and phone calls that never come.
One letter Eleanor does write, almost immediately, is a letter to her mom:
She said everything she'd wanted to say in the last six months. She said she was sorry. She begged her to think of Ben and Mouse—and Maisie. She threatened to call the police. (55.51-54)
Wow. Finally, a safe distance away from Richie, Eleanor can tell her mom everything. Even though Eleanor couldn't take her siblings with her, this seems like her best effort to save all of them.
And it seems like it works, too. Park reports that Eleanor's siblings and their toys have vanished from Eleanor's house, but Richie is still there. (Eleanor never mentions getting a response from her mom, though.) In one chilling scene, Park walks by Eleanor's old house and sees Richie come home and fall out of his car, nearly too drunk to stand. He stands over Richie, thinking about hurting him—or killing him—but instead just kicks the ground next to him, sending ice and dirt into Richie's face. Park, it seems, blames Richie (and rightly so) for a whole lot.
Both Eleanor and Park manage to move on. Park gets even more heavily into eyeliner and punk music, and gets a job at his favorite record store; Eleanor goes to theater camp and starts over at a new school. But it's pretty clear that neither of them stops thinking about each other. At the very end of the book, Park finally—finally—gets a postcard from Eleanor that "Just three words long" (58. 10). We think we know what Eleanor wrote, but we'll never know. It a little bit kills us.
What do you think the postcard said?