65 pages • 2 hours read
Tahereh MafiUnravel Me
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Psychological Effects of Physical Isolation
Building on a theme introduced in Shatter Me, Unravel Me pays careful attention to the psychological effects of physical isolation. For Juliette, whose lethal touch means she is unable to make physical contact with anyone except for Adam and Warner, being physically touched is something that she simultaneously longs for and fears. Her inability to touch others makes her feel like a “monster,” who deserves punishment, misery, or even death. As such, when Juliette does experience physical touch, it carries intense emotional and physical significance. When she kisses Adam in the early chapters of Unravel Me, for example, Juliette thinks, “My skin is hypersensitive, finally finally finally awake and thrumming with life, humming with feelings so intense it’s almost indecent” (20). These “feelings” include both the sensation of skin-to-skin contact and the love she feels for Adam. Later in the book, after their breakup, Juliette wonders what proportion of the love she felt for Adam came from the sheer relief of being able to touch another human being. Being able to touch someone after having touch withheld for so long creates emotional intimacy in Juliette as well as physical intimacy.
The physiological effects that Juliette experiences as a result of her isolation are gradually resolved as Juliette discovers other means of having emotional intimacy, such as through her growing friendships with other members of Omega Point, her utility to the collective (which makes her feel as though she is part of the group), and even her conversations with Warner, whom she can touch but often chooses not to, due to their history as enemies. As her emotional connections improve in accordance with her growing self-esteem, Juliette becomes less consumed with the idea of physical touch as the singular avenue through which intimacy can be achieved. Mafi explores this when Kenji is being rushed to the medical bay after suffering from Juliette’s touch powers which, she does not yet know, were channeled through Warner. Juliette thinks, “I wasn’t touching him, I couldn’t have been touching him please please please I couldn’t have touched him but then I freeze […] I’m not wearing my gloves. I forgot my gloves. I was in such a rush to get here tonight” (312). Now secure in her friendships at Omega Point (and her growing attraction to Warner), Juliette realizes that she has become less attentive to the threat of her touch. This would have been impossible for Juliette of earlier in the novel, when she was constantly on alert for any potential physical contact and would have never forgotten her gloves. Moreover, Juliette previously ruminated on every physical touch (often for paragraphs), yet this version of Juliette, who is more active and involved with those around her, cannot even be sure whether she made contact with Kenji. Though this shift causes her turmoil in the moments after Kenji’s collapse, it signifies the ways in which Juliette is becoming less isolated, even as her touch remains dangerous to most of the people around her.
The other main psychological effect of Juliette’s isolation is that, for the first half of the novel, she is wrapped up in her own mind. Not being able to touch or communicate with others forced her to internalize all her needs and wants. Before arriving at Omega Point, the only outlet Juliette had was her journal. Living in her head and focusing intensely on her thoughts, feelings, and sensations was a survival mechanism that helped Juliette maintain her mental health during her imprisonment. However, this tendency damages her attempts to integrate into the community at Omega Point. Kenji’s tough love attitude helps Juliette get out of her head while reassuring her that her attempts to become part of the community will be rewarded. In this way, Juliette slowly sheds her fear of rejection and embodies her full power.
The Influence of Parents and Families
Unravel Me examines several different types of family structures and emphasizes the influence—both good and bad—of parents and family on a character’s development. The novel is full of cruel and malicious parents, most notably Anderson, who physically and psychologically abuses both Adam and Warner. Yet Juliette’s parents, who are entirely absent from both Shatter Me and Unravel Me, are still influential figures in her life despite their absence. When she suffers a disappointment, Juliette thinks, “I should’ve listened when my parents told me that things like me aren’t allowed to have dreams. Things like me are better off destroyed, is what my mother said to me” (94). The ability of an abusive parent to hold sway over their child, even across distances of space and time, is thus shown to be impactful and insidious. The strikethrough lines show that Juliette struggles against these cruel comments from her mother, but they still intrude upon her thoughts. She must spend the novel learning to examine from a distance what the cruelty of a parent can do (particularly through her increased understanding toward Warner) and learn self-confidence despite the negative messages she received about herself from her parents.
The revelation that Adam and Warner are secret half-brothers introduces another family dynamic into Unravel Me. The “brothers-as-enemies” trope hearkens back to mythological and religious traditions, including the biblical story of Cain and Abel and the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus. By making these enemies brothers, Mafi suggests that Warner and Adam are two different sides of the same coin. As two boys with the same terrible father, Adam and Warner have ended up with many similarities but many differences as well, suggesting that while bad parents may have a strong influence on their children, the choices of those children matter as well in determining character.
In contrast to the many cruel family cruel structures in the novel, Unravel Me also offers a positive view of “found families,” such as the one that is created at Omega Point. At one point, when the members of Omega Point have gathered, Juliette thinks, “I look around at their eager faces, men and women, youthful and middle-aged, all different ethnicities, shapes, and sizes. They’re interacting with one another like they’re part of a family and I feel a strange sort of pain stabbing at my side” (101). This representation of a family full of people that love one another despite their differences and in the absence of any biological relationship is echoed in the father-son relationship between Castle and Kenji, the kindest relationship shown in the book. The image of family that Juliette sees in Omega Point leads her to recognize that she still wants to belong to a caring community and has the emotional capacity to do so.
The Draws and Dangers of Power
Throughout Unravel Me, Juliette must contend with both the draws and the dangers of power, as she learns to control her Energy and become more confident in herself. In the beginning of the novel, Juliette fears and hates her power to the exclusion of being able to see its potential. When she breaks through the floor to the research rooms at Omega Point, she thinks, “I understand, for the first time, that I have the power to destroy everything” (57). Juliette’s power, uncontrolled, is a force for destruction; as her time at Omega Point continues, Juliette realizes that she must learn to manage her power. Even if she does not seek control over others or does not wish to do violence, she cannot ignore that she has the capacity to cause great damage. If she does not learn to use her powers, damage will still occur—and likely at a worse scale—due to her lack of control.
Yet Juliette is suspicious of what it might mean to control her powers. While Castle is excited at her potential, Juliette thinks, “In my very limited experience I’ve already found that people seeking power are not to be trusted. People with lofty goals and fancy speeches and easy smiles have done nothing to calm my heart” (113). Even as the novel emphasizes the importance of claiming one’s power, Mafi here warns against the threat of political control and demagoguery. In the tradition of dystopias, Unravel Me takes this real-world issue and widens its scope to demonstrate the dangers of totalitarianism. Juliette goes on: “Men with guns have never put me at ease no matter how many times they promised they were killing for good reason” (113). The proximity of these thoughts—the obviousness with which Juliette connects political speechifying to a transition to gun violence—suggests the ease with which ego-driven governing can devolve into the immoral use of power.
Juliette thus spends Unravel Me stuck between the dangers of two extremes: She cannot avoid taking control of her powers, but she fears the seductiveness of power and the ways in which it can quickly lead to violence and cruelty. Unravel Me does not offer an easy answer for this problem. While power is certainly portrayed as corruptive (with Anderson as the central symbol of this), choosing to deny one’s power—or worse, choosing not to stand up against tyranny—is dangerous both to oneself and to the group. Mafi’s novel ultimately advocates for the hard work of choosing to use power judiciously, a process that requires careful thought, reassessment, and continual self-control.
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