54 pages • 1-hour read
The Things We Do For Love
A 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
The Quest for Maternal Fulfillment
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains a discussion of pregnancy loss and child death.
Angie DeSaria longs to be a mother but struggles with pregnancy loss, infant death, and failed adoptions. It is only when she lets go of her all-consuming quest to become a parent that she attains her goal, realizing that she does not need a baby to fulfill this hole within her.
Initially, Angie’s obsessive desire to be a mother is destructive to her relationships, as well as her mental health. Her tunnel-vision causes her to forget everyone else in her life. When she and Conlan get a divorce, he reminds her that he wanted a baby, too. It is then that she understands the impact of her obsession: “She’d forgotten that in the last few years; Conlan had dreamed of fatherhood just as she wanted motherhood. Somewhere along the way, it had all become about her” (13). Mired in her own desires, Angie loses sight of her relationship with Conlan and his pain. Angie’s mother also illuminates the consequences of Angie’s fixation on motherhood. Maria advises, “God has given you an answer to your prayers, Angela. It is not the answer you wanted, so you don’t hear. It’s time to listen” (10). She urges her daughter to accept that she will not have a child, implying that Angie’s focus on this has come at the expense of her own well-being.
Despite recognizing the harm it has done, Angie struggles to completely let go of her preconceived ideas about motherhood. Over time, however, Angie learns that being a mother means more than holding an infant, and with Lauren, her maternal instincts blossom. Angie doles out advice and offers support that Lauren’s own mother fails to provide. After helping Lauren get ready for homecoming, for instance, Angie begins to grasp the role she is filling: “[S]he was embarrassed by how much emotion she suddenly felt. It was a little thing—helping a teenage girl get ready for a school dance; nothing, really—so why did she feel so much?” (113). Angie’s surge of emotion marks the beginnings of motherly love. In contrast to her desire for a baby, that love is notably selfless. For instance, after attempting to comfort Lauren at work one night, Angie belatedly recognizes the flaw in her approach: “[S]he’d wanted so much to solve Lauren’s problem, but […] next time, Angie vowed, she would just listen” (153). Angie is learning through experience, focusing less on herself and acting more like a mother.
Through the ups and downs of her relationship with Lauren, Angie learns that she is a parent, even if not biologically. After changing her mind about the adoption, Lauren returns to the cottage seeking forgiveness. Angie accepts her with open arms and tells Lauren that she is “part of [their] family” and their “girl” (338). These words, along with her declaration of love for Lauren, indicate that Angie views herself as Lauren’s parent. Angie’s sadness about Lauren running away is not about the baby but about losing the daughter she already had. When Angie learns to think beyond herself and open her heart to a teenager in need, she learns that motherhood is not about biological ties but about selfless love.
The Transformative Power of Love
The novel suggests that love can transform people and relationships in myriad ways. In particular, both Angie and Lauren learn that giving and receiving love can alleviate past pain and provide the fortitude to endure future hardship.
Initially, Angie is focused only on herself, but when she becomes receptive to love, her world changes. Not long after Angie arrives in West End, Mira suggests that “maybe it’s time to reach out to someone else in need” (65). By helping others, she suggests, Angie could ease her own pain and rediscover happiness. Angie therefore volunteers at Help-Your-Neighbor, where she meets Lauren. Angie first feels the fruits of this new connection the night after the homecoming dance. Both Lauren and Angie are distraught, but once they begin talking about the dance, they perk up: “[B]y eleven thirty, when it was time to go to the restaurant, Angie was laughing again” (123). Laughter here indicates the restorative power of love: Simply talking with each other bolsters Angie’s spirits and helps her get through another day.
Over time, by giving her love and attention to both Conlan and Lauren, Angie becomes stronger and able to endure more. Angie understands the strength of love when she looks at Conlan after yet another failed adoption: “For a while there, it had seemed that love had moved on, left them behind. They’d lost their way because they’d thought their love wasn’t enough. Now they knew better” (331). Angie, and Conlan, now understands that love fortifies not just a person but relationships, too. Recognizing this seals Angie’s transformation, allowing her to be more open and giving in her connections with others.
Lauren, too, is impacted by giving and receiving love, which helps her find her place in the world and realize how genuine care can ease burdens. The kindness of the DeSaria women leads Lauren to a realization: “There it was, the truth of the matter, the pea under her mattress. She’d felt alone for so long, and now—irrationally—she felt as if she belonged somewhere” (130). The DeSarias treat Lauren as family from day one of her working at the restaurant. The result is that Lauren does not feel alone for the first time in her life. The allusion to the pea under the mattress likens her realization to the fairy tale where the princess can feel even the smallest disruption in her sleep, implying that a seemingly small act of including Lauren in a dance has a huge impact, showing Lauren a world of love and belonging that she has never known. Having the chance to show love also fundamentally changes Lauren. On Christmas, when both Angie and Maria are overwhelmed by Lauren’s thoughtful gift, “Lauren’s smile seem[s] to be taking over her face. She [can’t] rein it in” (256). The girl’s physical transformation indicates the power of giving; by making Angie and Maria happy, Lauren experiences joy herself. Ultimately, feeling loved and supported empowers Lauren to do difficult things, like choosing to raise her baby and returning to the cottage to live with Angie and Conlan as a family.
Embracing Grief to Heal
The novel suggests that the grieving process can be messy, especially when someone avoids confronting the pain and heartache of loss. This is compounded when a person grieves multiple things. Such is the case with Angie DeSaria, but over time and with the help of loved ones, she learns that to heal and move forward, she must tackle her grief head-on.
Angie does not always face her grief in productive ways, which causes the pain to persist. When Angie visits her family in West End after losing Sophia, she acknowledges that “she’d been grieving alone for too long” (7). By acknowledging that isolation has allowed her to brood over her sorrow, she signals her awareness that she can do more to lessen the burden. Her mother alludes to one approach to dealing with heartache when she tells Angie about how Tony always wanted to fix up the beach house. She notes that “it always started with the one thing” (24)—a reference not only to repairs to the cottage, but also to how Angie can help the restaurant and herself by taking just one step forward.
Despite this advice, Angie struggles to take that first step, instead staying busy to keep the pain at bay. This works, but only temporarily. Ultimately, Angie’s avoidance forces the heartache to linger. Eventually, Mira confronts her about this, saying, “You’re still running full speed. Away from Seattle and your ruined marriage, toward West End and the failing restaurant” (44). Instead of embracing her grief, Angie is “running full speed” away from it. As a result, she cannot heal and experiences intense bouts of heartache and longing.
Angie ultimately discovers that healing requires confronting one’s pain. At the theater, Angie protests the new red dress, and her mother reminds her that she is single and imparts this advice: “It’s time to look forward instead of back” (143). Avoiding romance is a way for Angie to avoid the grief associated with her marriage, but it also prevents her from building a new life going forward. Taking her mother’s advice to heart, Angie speaks to Conlan when she meets her ex-husband at the bar during intermission. Similarly, after developing a relationship with Lauren, Angie forces herself to help the girl through her pregnancy, and the result is emotional progress. Before going to the maternity store, Angie reflects, “It might hurt a bit, might remind her of a few of her harder times, but those feelings were part of who she was, and in the end, it was more hurtful to run away than to face them” (274). Angie here explicitly states that to heal, she must stare down her feelings. Moreover, by noting that the pain is part of her, she recognizes that grief never truly goes away. This understanding, and the strength Angie gains in the process, enables her to survive Lauren’s change of heart. That Angie is strong enough to carry on and accept Lauren back into her life proves that to recover from heartache, one must embrace grief, not ignore it.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence