Everything Everything, Flowers for Algernon, and Books-Within-Books In Literature by Emma

Recently, I read the novel Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon. The story is set from the point of view of an 18-year old girl named Maddie. Through a mixture of traditional prose, online conversations, hand-drawn diagrams, and even “book reviews,” she tells her story, which occurs over the span of about half of a year. Maddie has a disease called SCID, or Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease. Basically, it means she’s allergic to almost everything, and lives almost completely isolated in her house. The only people she comes in contact with are her mother and her nurse, Carla, and she has only ever experienced the outside world through books. She’s basically accepted her life as it is, until one day, a new family moves into the neighboring house. Maddie begins watching them from her bedroom window, and is particularly intrigued by the younger brother, a boy named Ollie. Ollie becomes interested in Maddie when her mom turns away a cake that he and his sister bring her, since she can’t risk bringing allergens inside the house. Soon, Maddie and Ollie begin talking online, and eventually meet in person, with Carla’s help in concealing their relationship from Maddie’s mom. At this point, they’ve both fallen head-over-heels in love, but Maddie’s mom eventually finds out that they’ve become close and forbids her from meeting Ollie in the house or talking online, effectively severing their relationship.

(I’d advise a spoiler alert starting around here— I feel like the ending is fairly important to understanding the overall story, but it’s also a pretty unexpected plot twist, so feel free to decide whether you want to leave that a surprise.) Some time passes, and Maddie, who’s become more and more frustrated with the return to her dull everyday life, decides that life isn’t worth living without the color and excitement Ollie brought to it. She buys plane tickets to Hawaii without her mom knowing, leaves the house for the first time, and travels there with Ollie. Everything goes well for a few days—they sightsee, meet a friend of Ollie’s, and even go cliff-diving, but Maddie wakes up one night in intense pain, goes to the hospital, and eventually travels home, as it’s clear she’s very sick. She’s sent back home and cuts herself off from everyone, including Ollie, and soon, he moves away. One day, however, she receives an email from a doctor who treated her in Hawaii who tells her that she believes Maddie never had SCID. Maddie is shocked, and eventually learns that her mother was so mentally damaged after a car accident killed her father and brother that she began keeping baby Maddie in the house, and eventually convinced herself that she had SCID. Maddie gradually begins exploring the outside world, and the book ends as she’s about to meet Ollie again. (End of spoiler alert!)

I first read Everything Everything a few years ago, and really enjoyed it. One thing in particular that I liked was that the author incorporated discussions of classic books, such as The Little Prince, Flowers for Algernon, and even Lord of the Flies into Maddie’s own story. When I reread it more recently, I was curious about its references to Flowers for Algernon as well, so I read a short (about a half-hour long) summary and analysis of the novel, as well as parts of the book itself, to see how understanding this particular book could help me draw parallels to Maddie’s story in Everything Everything.

Maddie references Flowers for Algernon throughout the first half of the book. (Again, spoiler alert, but the end of the novel is a big part of the themes discussed here.) The novel chronicles the journey of Charlie, a developmentally disabled man who chooses to become a test subject for an intelligence-increasing surgery. The surgery succeeds, gradually making him more and more intelligent, and allowing him to form and defend his ideals. At the peak of his intelligence, he believes himself to be enlightened, but soon realizes he is smarter than the scientists who engineered his surgery, and finds a mistake in their experiment. Before long, his mental abilities begin to decline as a result of this mistake, and, when Algernon, the lab mouse who also had the surgery, dies prematurely, Charlie realizes his own fate will be the same. The novel ends with Charlie in the same childlike mental state he started in, but it seems that his perception of the world has shifted in a few small ways.

The inclusion of this book in Everything Everything can help us draw parallels from Charlie to Maddie, which can in turn give us insights into Maddie’s feelings and motivations. Like Charlie, Maddie narrates the book, so we see the central, life-changing events of the story from her point of view. Everything Everything is also set completely in the present tense, which help the reader get into Maddie’s head. This is crucial in making Maddie’s character feel realistic and relatable, even though many of her actual struggles with her disease are completely different from the everyday frustrations the average reader might experience. This style of narration also showcases how Maddie’s relationship with Ollie changes how she thinks. As the novel progresses and her narration focuses more and more on Ollie, we can she her become more confident, independent, and spontaneous, changes that have clearly happened as a result of this relationship. Likewise, in Flowers for Algernon, the readers can relate to Charlie’s situation, which might otherwise seem exceptional and unrelatable, through his simple, heartfelt narration of the story. Because the story is set up similar to a “diary,” the reader is clearly shown Charlie’s feelings, and can empathize with him more.The narration in Flowers for Algernon is also similar to that of Everything Everything is its ability to showcase the change in the main character. Flowers for Algernon shows this perhaps even more clearly by making gradual changes in Charlie’s spelling, grammar, and word choice, and well as the complexity of his analyses of his own emotions and others’ actions, allowing the reader to watch as Charlie gradually becomes both more intelligent and more aware of the world and how he interacts with it.

These parallels between Everything Everything and Flowers for Algernon help to highlight the narration style in the book, which can in turn demonstrate to the reader Maddie’s growth throughout the book and the relatable aspects of her situation. However, they can also give us insight into Maddie’s motivations through helping us explore what the book symbolizes to her. The plot in Flowers for Algernon is essentially circular, with Charlie’s mental capacity ending up basically back where it started at the beginning of the novel. However, Charlie’s situation has changed; especially, his relationships to his friends and teachers seem much more genuine. This is somewhat similar to what we see after the first half of Everything Everything— after she’s cut off from Ollie, Maddie’s life is basically back to where it started, with her only gaining glimpses the outside world from the Internet, her education, and her mom. At the end of Flowers for Algernon, Charlie basically accepts this fate, as evidenced by both his hope to simply be able to read again and his agreement to move into a permanent care home. However, at this point in Maddie’s story, she gives her copy of Flowers for Algernon to her nurse, Carla, when she leaves. By doing this, readers can infer that Maddie is rejecting everything that this book symbolizes: to her, the acceptance of a return to a less enlightened and vivid world. This can better help us understand why she chooses later on in the book to leave her sheltered life, giving us insight into her actions.

Overall, I really enjoyed these “book-within-a-book” parallels in Everything Everything, and thought it was an interesting type of symbolism. The author did a really good job using Flowers for Algernon to make parallels to Maddie’s own story, help elucidate some of the her motivations, and tie in to the book’s overarching themes. In addition, while including famous literature certainly is an effective method of symbolism, I also had a lot of fun reading the author’s take on various other books I’ve read and enjoyed, such as The Little Prince, Lord of the Flies, and Pride and Prejudice. Overall, this was just a really fun addition to the book, and I’d definitely recommend both Everything Everything and the books it discusses to anyone.