Every Day

Fiction | Novel | YA

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Symbols & Motifs

The Ocean

In the beginning of the book, when A asks Rhiannon, “Where do you want to go?” a lot rides on her answer:

If she says, Let’s go to the mall, I will disconnect. If she says, Take me back to your house, I will disconnect. If she says, Actually, I don’t want to miss sixth period, I will disconnect. […] But she says, ‘I want to go to the ocean.’ […] And I feel myself connecting (10).

The ocean is a place where they can be free; Rhiannon can be free from Justin’s constant judgments, and A can be free of the lonely, constantly changing life that A leads. It’s a powerful place of boundaries, where land meets sea. But this boundary is fluid, changing with the tides, changing with the storms, changing with every wave. A and Rhiannon feel their burdens lift as the boundaries between them change while they run and dance and play on the sand: “Suddenly we are touching the sacred part—running to the shoreline, feeling the first cold burst of water on our ankles, reaching into the tide to catch at shells before they ebb away from our fingers” (14).

The ocean allows them to feel primal, to lose their connection to the mundane details of their separate lives and to feel deeply connected to each other, and to nature. A is not tied to one religion; rather, s/he appreciates the sense of the sacred that connects all. Only when Rhiannon begins to talk of the future (let’s do this again tomorrow and the next day, and the next day after that), is A jolted back to the reality of their situation.

The experience at the beach is so powerful that the pull of the ocean is felt across the whole book. At the beginning of their relationship, when A reveals who s/he is to Rhiannon, trying to persuade her to trust him, A reminds her of their day at the beach, asking if she too felt the power of that day at the ocean. And at the end of their relationship, when A says goodbye to Rhiannon as they lie in bed together, s/he remembers the ocean and its great ability to hold them both: “I lie on my back and she curls into me. I am reminded of a beach, an ocean” (320).

TreesTrees

Like the ocean, trees also help A connect to nature and be fully in the present, and not anxious about the past or the future. When A is on their first date with Rhiannon, s/he shares a childhood memory with her, remembering when s/he was playing hide-and-go-seek in the woods. A tells her about climbing a tree higher and higher, and feeling that same freedom that the ocean gives A—the feeling of escaping from the details of his/her life:

It was magical…So there I was, hovering above everything I knew. I had made it somewhere special, and I’d gotten there all on my own […] I’d climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself (21).

When A is in Rhiannon’s body, s/he wants to give her a similar experience. A goes for a hike in the woods, climbing higher and higher, until s/he reaches “the highest point the eye can see, not counting the clouds, the air, the lazy sun […] When no one else is around, we open ourselves to the quieter astonishments that enormity can offer” (198).

In the final chapter, both A and Rhiannon climb a tree, this time together. They are climbing to reach Alexander’s treehouse. Together, they have transformed the tree motif into a more domesticated image, one in which they eat their dinner: “We sit cross-legged on the floor and eat, facing each other in the candlelight. We don’t rush it—we let the taste of the moment sink in. I light more candles, and revel in the sight of her” (315). They are both experiencing the enormity of the moment, but this time they are experiencing it together, on their last night together. They know the future does

The Body

A is constantly shape shifting, so s/he doesn’t spend a lot of time focused on his/her appearance. The reader is given bare physical descriptions of the forty-one bodies that A inhabits. When A is preoccupied, the body almost ceases to exist, barely getting a passing mention.

A also provides minimal description of Rhiannon, other than to state that A finds her beautiful. There are no detailed descriptions of her face (other than that she has blue eyes), her hair, her body. A is not interested in those details. S/he is much more interested in her thoughts and her feelings.

But the body will have attention. Certain bodies insist on their presence, whether it’s the body of a as a drug-addicted person, a suicidal person, a beautiful person, a person who doesn’t speak English, a hung-over person, or an obese person, there is always something that eventually brings A back to the specifics of the body, not letting A reside completely in their host’s mind.

And Rhiannon can’t ignore the body, either. She is physically attracted to some of A’s bodies more than others, even though A tries to encourage her to focus on what’s inside, instead of appearances. But she does not have A’s experience of living in so many different bodies, so it’s hard for her to understand A’s perspective.

And she’s not alone. When A is Finn, an overweight boy, A feels the judgments that flow from everyone, as they stare at Finn’s size. When A is Ashley, a stunningly beautiful girl, s/he feels the judgments again, as people stare at her beauty, a beauty which she herself has worked hard at perfecting.

A is not comfortable when s/he is objectified, either as a displeasing or pleasing object. A is aware of how people will often use appearances in order to see difference and create dichotomies, creating an “us” vs “them.”A wishes people would focus less on the surface differences and more on what’s inside. If so, then people would be able to “touch the universal” more (107), realizing how much they have in common.