39 pages • 1 hour read
Lynn PainterA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Clothing and shoes are an important symbol of identity and connection in the novel. Liz’s sense of fashion is constantly referred to as old-fashioned and feminine, and Wes and Joss often tease Liz about her vintage-style dresses. When Liz wears a flowery jumper to a party, Michael thinks she is wearing a work uniform, and Liz quickly lies by telling him she works at a diner.
When Ashley vomits all over Liz, she is forced to wear Wes’s baseball sweats and sweatshirt. This switch in clothing signals their growing connection as they scheme to woo Michael. Their machinations involve a shopping trip, as Wes helps Liz pick out clothes that he believes will make her more appealing. Although Liz resents this “makeover,” she finds outfits that she likes that also have Wes’s approval. Wes also surprises Liz by buying her a pair of new sneakers. When they get ruined in the rain, she is dismayed because they represent Wes’s kindness: “They were covered in wet, sticky mud, and that made me more upset than it should’ve. They were just sneakers, after all. And it was just mud. But […] I’d wanted them to stay as perfect as they’d been when Wes had walked them over to the counter at Devlish and paid for them” (258). Later, Liz wears Wes’s sweatshirt again, this time in her attempt at a grand gesture to woo Wes, bringing their connection via fashion full circle.
Additionally, Liz’s sense of fashion symbolizes the influence her mother has had on her: “My mother had been sweet, patient, and adorable, like a modern version of Doris Day. She’d loved dresses, homemade bread, and fresh-cut flowers from her garden” (46). Not only has Liz inherited her mother’s movie collection; she has adopted her mother’s way of dressing. This is another reason why she finds it hard to go shopping for prom dresses without her; her mother would have loved the experience of watching Liz try on various dresses. The dress Liz eventually settles on is white, as suggested by Wes, and so beautiful that Liz knows her mother would have approved of it as well. Liz’s appearance is inherently tied to her own identity and another way of Coping With Grief and Loss.
Fate is a significant motif that underscores The True Meaning of Happily Ever After in the novel. Liz believes in the power of the universe and predestined love featured in her beloved rom-coms. In movies, the hero and heroine are brought together by forces out of their control because the universe knows that they truly belong together. Liz knows that this is movie magic created by writers, directors, and actors, but she still believes that fate can work similarly in real-life even if she does not understand how, or why fate sometimes deviates from what seems right. For example, she questions why fate would match her father with someone as cool as Helena, who Liz describes as the complete opposite of her wholesome mother.
Still, Liz believes Michael has been brought back into her life in order to fall madly in love with her; after their reunion in the school hallway, she thinks he will be her “happily ever after.” Liz rewrites other coincidences and mishaps that occur in her scheme to woo him as fate intervening in her love life, for better or worse. When she falls in love with Wes, her belief in fate is strengthened: She realizes the universe was pushing her toward Wes all along by creating apparent obstacles in her potential relationship with Michael, such as the party vomit and bloody nose incidents.
Because this is a novel, the force of “fate” is actually the author orchestrating necessary plot events to bring the protagonists together in a happy ending. This highlights the meaning of romantic fate inside and outside of fiction. It raises the questions: Do larger universal forces encourage people to fall in love in real life? Or do people make their own fate in choosing their romantic partners? The novel seems to make a strong case for both sides.
Like a movie soundtrack, music exists in the novel’s background to support its exploration of rom-coms and “happily ever after.” Significant plot events are interspersed with song lyrics, either by an actual song playing or Liz playing the song in her mind. Ever since her mother had her take piano lessons at the age of four, music has been a staple in Liz’s life and a reminder of her mother’s legacy. Her mother even taught her a “game” in which they would create playlists to accompany real life events.
Liz still enjoys playing the piano and plans to study music curation at UCLA. When she creates “movie moments” in her mind—idealizations of real life that borrow from tropes and events in a rom-com—she adds music to complete the effect. She takes her headphones everywhere. As she meets Michael in the hallway, she is listening to Van Morrison. During the impromptu basketball game with her friends, she carefully selects a Beastie Boys song to supplement the competitive energy in the gym. After Liz reveals to Wes that she likes passionately playing “Someone Like You” by Adele on the piano, he tells her to add the song to their own personal “Wes and Liz” soundtrack (163).
When Wes and Liz get their happy ending, after she makes Wes a CD of their playlist, Liz declares—“[c]ue the Bazzi” (343). Appropriately, the novel includes the full playlist of Wes and Liz after the Epilogue. The list encompasses music from various genres and generations, including artists such as Jay-Z, the Foo Fighters, Taylor Swift, and Joni Mitchell. The novel uses music to bolster its characterization and depiction of romance.
By Lynn Painter