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What is the theme statement in the novel Olive Kitteridge?
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The main theme of Olive Kitteridge is the complexity of human flaws and the universal need for love and connection. Through interconnected stories, the novel portrays characters, especially Olive, as deeply flawed yet deserving of compassion. Themes of suicide, interpersonal connections, and the impact of individual lives on others are explored. Olive's journey from a domineering, isolated figure to one who recognizes her mistakes highlights the potential for growth and acceptance.
It can be difficult to come up with a theme for a book that is a series of stories connected around a town and the character of Olive Kitteridge, and which take place over a number of decades. However, one main theme threading the various stories together is that humans are deeply flawed but all the same deserving of love.
The main example or expression of this theme is Olive herself. She is not good-looking. She is blunt and sharp-tongued, lacking in social skills. She is harsh in bringing up her son and doesn't realize the damage she is doing him.
In the opening story, her husband, Henry, becomes infatuated with his young, pretty employee, Denise, who is everything Olive is not. In other stories, we see how the son, Christopher, has to move far away from Olive because of what she has done to him. We witness her,...
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in jealousy and grief, do petty things. For example, she steals one of a pair of her new daughter-in-law's shoes, as if to repay her for what, in Olive's mind, she has done: breaking up the pairing of Olive and Christopher.
For all Olive's flaws, however, Strout never loses sight of her as a feeling, damaged, hurting human being like the rest of us, seeking in blundering ways for love and acceptance, as are all the book's characters. In the end, the book's flawed characters express their humanity in taking care of each other amid all of life's pain.
Several themes run through the book Olive Kitteridge. Some of the themes are suicide, the importance of connecting with other people, and how one life influences another, even in small ways.
This book consists of 13 stories, and the link connecting all of them is Olive Kitteridge, although not all of them are about her directly. Olive is a domineering and controlling woman, who often distances others and ruins her chances at having successful relationships and friendships, but eventually realizes her mistakes and starts to accept people towards the end of her life.