Banned Book Club: All The Bright Places

By: Pamela Gliatis

The Banned Book Club continues this month with a novel written by the Emmy-award-winning New York Times bestseller Jennifer Niven, who is most well known for this heartbreaking love story of two young adults, All The Bright Places. Before I dive into the details of this book, I need to issue a TRIGGER WARNING as this article will not be censored. This article will not only contain spoilers but will also discuss sex, mental health, and suicide. 

This book, which is more than just a love story, has been banned and challenged in Illinois and Iowa since it contains “pornographic” details, although my first assumption was that it was because it contains suicide. However, the “pornographic” details are somewhat graphic details of two teenagers being intimate for the first time after a period of getting to know each other and falling for one another. After reading this book, I feel it is more about truly living and finding the bright places in life amid dark times. 

All the Bright Places alternates between the perspectives of two characters, high school seniors Theodore Finch and Violet Markey. Theodore is fascinated by death and is even more curious about the different methods of suicide. But each time, something good, no matter how small, delays him from attempting it. Violet is counting down the days to escape her small Indiana town, yet doesn’t know how to live while grieving her sister’s recent death. Through a moment of fate, these two are brought together and forced to understand each other, which ultimately leads them through a journey of love, healing, and heartbreak. 

From the beginning to the end, as the chapters alternate between the two main characters’ perspectives, the book provides the contrast of the character’s opposing thoughts and feelings over time and how it catches up to them in the end. Violet is a popular student who loves writing, but all of that was put on hold due to grief and depression when her sister died in a tragic car accident, in which Violet was the driver and survived. Theodore has somewhat of a reputation for being “dangerous” because he has skipped school often and gotten into fights over being bullied. Violet starts withdrawing from her peers and studies as she struggles with the loss of her sister, while Theodore is misunderstood as he quietly struggles with an undiagnosed mental illness, likely bipolar disorder. 

The book starts off with Violet standing on a ledge on top of a bell tower on the day of her sister’s birthday, consumed with confusion and grief. Theodore happens to be there as he is skipping class and wants to sit on a ledge to tease himself with the feeling of possibly falling off. He ends up saving Violet from possibly wanting to jump, who then realizes that she never wanted to hurt herself and is embarrassed that she was even there to begin with. From that moment, Theodore becomes enamored with Violet and makes it his mission to win her over, including forcing her to be his partner in a project where they have to explore certain places in their home state. Through that project, they end up getting to know each other slowly over time, and Theodore is able to show Violet the beauty of living life in the most unexpected places, even though he is secretly thinking of ways to end his own life. 

The more Violet gives into wandering and finding unexpectedly beautiful odd places with Theodore, the more they fall in love with each other. Violet starts to heal through her experience with Theodore, and watching her be happy again brings brightness in Theodore’s dark moments. However, his undiagnosed mental illness worsens over time, which starts to concern their friends at school and their families. Through the connection of the other characters in their lives, we also get a glimpse of their personal internal or mental struggles in other different ways than Violet’s and Theodore’s. 

While the book ends in the most heartbreaking way with Theodore ultimately drowning himself, it is not described in detail. It occurs in a beautiful lake that was one of the places Violet and Theodore had decided to wander to because Theodore learned of a myth that there is a hole at the very bottom that is rumored to sink people into “another world.” Apparently, people had gone missing from that lake, never to be found again. When Theodore wasn’t heard from for more than a few days and there were suspicious texts that he had sent a few days prior, Violet remembered this place and decided to look for him there. Since his clothes were folded neatly on the rocks near the lake, and nowhere to be found, she called the police, and eventually, they found his body. I have to admit that a part of me was so disappointed that this occurred. However, as I continued to read on, I realized that this story was necessary to show us the other side of death and suicide. 

Throughout the book, Theodore logically researched all the different methods of suicide: the least and most common, the least and most painful, the quickest and longest. Every single time he did that, he found a better reason to live life and not do it, even more so with Violet in his life. He also never learned of the aftermath of these suicide methods and how they cause pain and damage to others when they occur. Ultimately, his mental health struggles and life circumstances take over his mind and emotions, which shows us the reality of why some teenagers commit suicide. He had experienced his parents getting divorced, his father not only being highly abusive towards him and his family but also abandoning him for another family. Some people offered to help, but Theodore was already so far gone mentally and emotionally that his family didn’t even pay attention to what was going on. In the end, he went with a romanticized suicide method, for he picked a place that Violet and Theodore experienced together, one that spoke of a possible “other side” he could escape to. 

After his death occurs, people don’t even label his death as suicide, for he had drowned in a lake and didn’t leave a suicide note. Only Violet, Theodore’s family, and his close friends know the truth about what really happened based on his behavior and text messages. His death is openly discussed at school among teachers and students, for it is okay to talk about since it wasn’t labeled as a suicide. This is important to note because it accurately depicts what’s going on in our schools. In fact, Violet openly discusses this through her perspective and hints at how suicide should not be a label or a stigma that we can’t talk about. Earlier on in the book, the school counselor admits to Theodore that if a student commits suicide, the counselor can get into serious trouble and try to cover up the situation since they were unable to save that student. If we talked about these issues more often, perhaps it would allow other young people to feel more comfortable to come forward and get the help they need. 

As I read through this book, not only do the emotions and situations grip my heart and take me back to my time in high school, but I also can relate to it so deeply even now as an adult. The intertwined stories of Violet and Theodore perfectly capture the many unfortunate, unexpected situations that high school students may face and are not equipped to deal with. Their own love story can teach all of us how to deal with adversities in life, no matter what happens. The different perspectives provided in the book show us as the reader that we all are dealing with similar things in life in different ways, and no matter how difficult or not difficult they may be, it is up to us how to overcome them the best way we can. 

There is also a Netflix movie based on All The Bright Places, which I watched immediately the day after I read the book. I was let down by the movie, as it left out many important details of their love story, and it also added lines that weren't in the book. The movie also did not glamorize suicide in any way, nor did it hint at Theodore thinking about it, which was such a difference from the book. It seems that the movie focuses more on the perspective of Theodore struggling with his undiagnosed mental illness instead. This adds to the stigma around suicide and how it is a sensitive subject that is not talked about enough due to backlash from others. However, I realized that the additional lines they added in the movie were meant to show the viewers the important lessons that came from the book that may not have been expressed clearly enough to the reader but were left up to our own interpretation. This is where the movie sums up perfectly the biggest lesson from the book where Violet talks to her peers about her time with Theodore:

“I used to be worried about everything. Things that seemed meaningful were actually meaningless. I worried about life. I worried about what would happen if I let myself feel again. I thought I didn't deserve to. Then, without really knowing, I changed. I wasn't worried about what would happen if I lived; I was worried about what would happen if I didn't... what I would miss. I worried about not remembering; not remembering all of the moments, all of the places. And that's because of Finch. Because he taught me to wander. He taught me that you don't need to climb a mountain to stand on top of the world, and even the ugliest places can be beautiful - as long as you take the time to look. And it's okay to get lost, as long as you find your way back. But, in learning all of that, I missed seeing something more important; seeing Finch. I missed that he was in pain. I missed that he was teaching me all along how to move on. Finch was a dreamer. He dreamt while he was awake. He dreamt of all the beauty in the world and he made it come to life. Finch taught me that there's beauty in the most unexpected of places, and that there are bright places even in dark times. And that, if there isn't, you can be that bright place... with infinite capacities.”