All the Bright Places Summary

All the Bright Places Summary

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Setting

The novel is set in the fictional town of Bartlett, Indiana.

Main Characters

Theodore Finch – is one of the novel’s protagonists and Violet’s love interest.

Violet Markey – she is one of the novel’s protagonists and is Finch’s love interest.

Eleanor Markey – she was Violet’s older sister who died in a car accident nine months before the novel begins at age 18.

Violet’s Mom - Violet describes both her mom and dad as perfect. Her mom is a writer and always encouraged Violet’s passion for writing

Violet’s Dad – he is a teacher and is often in the living room wearing headphones and grading papers alongside his wife,

Finch’s Mom – she is Finch, Kate, and Decca’s mom who has been sad and disaffected since her divorce from Finch’s dad a year before the novel begins.

Finch’s Dad – he is Finch, Kate, and Decca’s dad who is a tall, burly, former hockey player from Canada.

Kate Finch – she is Finch and Decca’s older sister. She is about 19 and has been out of school for almost a year when the novel begins.

Decca Finch – she is Finch and Kate’s eight-year-old sister. She is bluntly honest and emotional throughout much of the novel.

Mr. Embry – is Finch’s school counselor. They meet every Friday and, after Mr. Embry catches Finch on the bell tower at school, he insists they meet on Mondays as well.

Josh Raymond – he is Rosemarie’s eight-year-old son and Finch’s dad’s stepson.

Plot Summary

As Finch stands at the top of his high school’s bell tower, prepared to jump, he wonders if today is a good day to die. Finch has spent the past few months "asleep” his term for a depressive episode, but now that he is "awake,” he is fixated on death. However, he realizes he is not alone; a popular girl, Violet Markey, is on the other side of the tower. He talks Violet off the ledge, and she convinces him not to jump either. Knowing that there are onlookers below, Finch makes it seem like Violet came up to save him, not to contemplate killing herself. They both make it down safely.

Later that day in U.S. Geography, their teacher, Mr. Black, announces a project to "wander Indiana.” Finch tells the class that he is going to work with Violet. Violet feels awful for almost killing herself. She knows that her death would devastate her parents, especially since Violet’s older sister Eleanor died in a car crash last spring. Since her death, Violet has not been able to write, something she once enjoyed and now she wears Eleanor’s glasses to try to connect with her sister. She has not been in a car since Eleanor died and insists on biking everywhere.

Wanting to appear normal to Violet, Finch creates a Facebook account so he and Violet can communicate with each other. They come up with their "Rules for Wandering” and begin to exchange Virginia Woolf's quotes. Though Finch is familiar with Virginia Woolf’s suicide note, he has not read the rest of her work. After school one day, Finch and Violet bike to Hoosier Hill, the highest point in Indiana for their school project. Finch insists that it is beautiful, but Violet is underwhelmed. Next, Violet insists they go visit the Bookmobile Park. Though she gives Finch directions to get there by bike, Finch insists they take Finch’s mom’s car, a Saturn that he calls Little Bastard. Violet relents. As they continue to visit sites across Indiana, their chemistry grows and Finch encourages Violet to start writing again so she can document their project.

As their relationship progresses, Violet starts to heal and improve. She realizes that she does not enjoy spending time with her former friend Amanda and Amanda’s boyfriend Roamer. Instead, Violet starts sitting with Finch’s friend Brenda and some other girls. She comes up with the idea for a new web magazine to replace the website that she and Eleanor ran, and she decides to stop wearing Eleanor’s glasses.

Finch’s mental health, meanwhile, starts to decline; he constantly thinks about suicide and researches various methods of killing himself. He attends mandated Sunday night dinners with his sisters, Kate and Decca, at Finch’s dad’s house, but he does not enjoy them. His dad is physically and emotionally abusive, and Finch suspects that his dad fathered a son with his new wife, Rosemarie, while he was cheating on Finch’s mom. Finch is, at times, unable to read or write, and he experiences headaches during which he can "feel sound” and "hear space.” He knows he could talk to his mom but his mom would only tell him to take painkillers and remind him that he is sensitive. His counseling sessions with Mr. Embry do not help much, since Finch does everything in his power to keep Mr. Embry from discovering how poorly he feels. Finch goes on runs to try to clear his head, but it only works sometimes. He also repaints his room blue when it starts to feel claustrophobic.

On the first warm day of the year, Finch takes Violet to the Blue Hole, a lake that is supposedly bottomless. Finch dives down as deep as he can, enjoying the weight of the water but he does not want to upset Violet, so he returns to the surface. She is enraged that he was underwater for so long she thought he had died. Finch encourages her to scream and let go of her anger. When they get back to Finch’s house later, they have sex for the first time. Then, they go to the Purina tower to talk, but they end up falling asleep and spending the night there. Violet’s mom and Violet’s dad are engaged in the morning, and they forbid Violet from seeing Finch anymore.

Both Violet and Finch are distraught. Violet is angry enough to want to run away with Finch, while Finch’s mental health continues to decline. He starts to spend all of his time at home in his closet, though he continues to attend school sporadically. When Finch goes back to school after spring break, he continues to have issues reading. Then, in a meeting with Mr. Embry, Mr. Embry asks Finch what he knows about bipolar disorder. Finch stops listening and tries to just look pleasant in his mind, "crazy people” have bipolar disorder, and it is a way to explain people away. Later that day, when Roamer insults Finch in the hallway, Finch chokes Roamer and is expelled from school. He calls Violet and invites her to skip class and see another Indiana wonder with him, but Violet refuses. She is concerned Finch sounds unwell.

Finch spends most of the following day in his closet. At one point, he checks the landline’s voicemail and deletes a message from Mr. Embry to his mom. After dinner, he takes a large dose of sleeping pills but runs to the hospital and asks them to pump his stomach. When he comes to after the treatment, he leaves the hospital without telling them who he is. Not long after, Finch decides to attend a Life Is Life meeting, a support group for teenagers who have thought about or attempted suicide. He is shocked to find that Amanda also attends the group. She struggles with an eating disorder and has attempted suicide twice. The meeting is depressing; the other kids seem altered by the medications they take, and it seems like their identities are tied to their mental health diagnoses.

Violet borrows her parents’ car to visit Finch because she is concerned about him, and she joins him in his closet. Finch tells her about a cardinal that died when it hit the living room windows too many times. He was just a kid at the time, and he experienced his first "black mood” after the cardinal died. Violet is disturbed and she is even more disturbed when Amanda pulls her aside the next day and says that she saw Finch at a suicide support group. Violet visits Finch a few days later to celebrate his birthday. At first, it does not seem like there is anything wrong with him, aside from the fact that he is still living in his closet. When Violet mentions what Amanda said and asks Finch to get help, Finch coldly tells Violet to leave. Back at her house, Violet asks her parents to help her help Finch. She is concerned for his safety. But Finch’s mom, Kate, and Decca all refuse help. And when Finch disappears, they are unconcerned since he always comes back.

A few days after he leaves, Finch starts sending Violet cryptic texts and never responds when she asks him questions. Finch’s friends and family are not concerned at all. Meanwhile, Violet and her parents celebrate the anniversary of Eleanor’s death, and Violet continues to work on her new web magazine. Then, one Sunday late in April, Kate shows up at Violet’s house with an odd email from Finch and the concerning news that Finch has stopped checking in. Violet discovers that she and Finch’s friends have all received cryptic emails as well, so she goes to Finch’s house and inspects his closet again. She finds two lines of text and thinks she knows what they mean. She drives to the Blue Hole, where she finds Finch’s clothes neatly folded. After she calls 911, emergency responders retrieve Finch’s dead body from the water.

Violet’s parents insist on going with her to Finch’s funeral. The preacher does not mention suicide once; this is in part because the authorities could not rule Finch’s death a suicide, since he did not leave a note. As the days and weeks pass, Violet grows increasingly angry. Kids who once bullied Finch now seem to idolize and miss him. Violet has a counseling session with Mr. Embry in which Mr. Embry encourages her to realize that Finch’s death was not her fault. Instead, she needs to think of herself as a survivor and learn to live despite this loss. Violet also starts to reconnect with Amanda.

When Violet found Finch’s body, she also found and took the map that she and Finch used for their geography project. She discovers that he marked five more sites for her to visit, so she visits them in order. At each place, Finch left her something important to see or do. She finds a pair of his shoes on "shoe trees” near the Kentucky border, and she paints a coat of paint the color of Finch’s eyes on the world’s biggest ball of paint. She visits an abandoned drive-in theater, where Finch wrote "I was here” on the screen. The fourth site is a monastery and grotto, and the final site is a small roadside chapel. The chapel was built to honor the victims of car crashes, a nod to Eleanor. Violet sits in a pew and cries as she reads lyrics and music that Finch left for her in the Bible. The song talks about how happy and whole she made him feel.

Several months later, Violet swims at the Blue Hole and remembers Finch. She misses him and still sees him everywhere, but she also thinks of all the places she has yet to see.

Themes

1. Mental Health, Stigma, and Suicide. All the Bright Places follows the romance of 17-year-olds Finch and Violet, who meet at the top of their school’s bell tower where they both plan to commit suicide. Instead of jumping, though, they talk each other off the ledge and soon develop a friendship that leads to a romantic relationship. However, Finch and Violet’s struggles with mental health and the knowledge that they were both on the brink of taking their own lives to appear in most parts of the novel. Finch has an undiagnosed mental illness, while Violet is still struggling to recover after her older sister died in a car crash nine months before the novel begins. Whereas Violet has supportive people in her life, Finch’s parents and peers do not understand, and he feels too ashamed to have his mental illness formally diagnosed and treated. Eventually, after Finch’s mental state gradually worsens, he commits suicide.
2. Individuality and Identity. Throughout the novel, 17-year-old Finch is caught up in figuring out who he is. He changes his identity every few weeks, cycling through "80s Finch,” "Badass Finch,” and finally "Dirtbag Finch.” Finch’s undiagnosed mental illness makes him unsure of which aspects of his identity are real but his quest to figure out who he is nevertheless reflecting a struggle that most teenagers go through.