48 pages • 1 hour read
The List of Things That Will Not Change
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 Relationship Between Mental Health, Behavior, and Emotions
Content Warning: This guide and its source material addresses LGTBQ+ and anti-gay discrimination and bias.
Throughout Bea’s stories in the novel, Bea goes through major ups and downs and learns important lessons about herself and the impact her emotions and mental health have on her well-being. While Bea exhibited outbursts and the feeling of uncontrollable emotion in her earlier childhood, the catalyst for her mental health instability is first the choking incident with her father, and largely, her parents’ divorce. As Bea grows emotionally and works to understand herself and those around her, she informs the reader of her emotional obstacles and the progress she has made.
Bea calls herself a “worrier” (23) and believes that her worrying began when she saw her dad nearly choke to death, and that it worsened with her parents’ divorce. This insinuates that Bea first started consistently experiencing anxiety when she considered the ever-present possibility of losing a loved one. The divorce then removed the structure of her familial unit and reinforced her fear of losing the people she loves. Following her parents’ divorce, Bea exhibits instability in her mental health that mirrors the sudden instability in her home life. While Bea’s parents address Bea’s needs lovingly and attentively during this time of change, Bea’s life has still been unexpectedly upended. During this time, Bea feels anxious, she can’t sleep, she develops eczema, and she lashes out physically on occasion. However, when Bea isn’t feeling anxious or angry, she often feels so overwhelmed with joy that she can’t contain herself. She compares her happiness to a balloon swelling up inside her, and her anger to an animalistic nature within herself: “What a feeling feels like: When I get mad, I feel cold. I don’t feel huge, like when I’m happy. It’s more like I’m filling up with something that runs over my edges and rises up behind me like a gigantic pair of bat wings” (159).
Behind these emotions and behaviors, Bea’s fear of losing her loved ones manifests in her life in a number of ways. First, she fears unexpected death, such as her father’s near-death experience while choking. Throughout the novel, she also experiences an underlying fear that the divorce will drive her mother away or make her forever unhappy, causing a rift between Bea and her family. She additionally worries heavily about Uncle Mission’s involvement in Jesse’s life, connecting his aloofness to the general possibility that family can turn on one another and abandon their loved ones. As much as Bea tries to help reunite Uncle Mission and Jesse, the rift remains at the end of the story. Bea’s unaddressed anxiety concerning loss is the underlying fear that connects many of the conflicts in the novel.
Bea’s parents observe these problems in her and take her to see Miriam, a therapist who helps Bea with her mental health and with navigating new experiences and emotions. Bea feels uncomfortable with Miriam at first, but soon learns to trust and open up to her. In doing so, Bea is able to see her actions more objectively and is reassured that she is not a bad person. Miriam provides Bea with a safe, judgment-free space to air out her concerns and regrets, and she also gives Bea specific tools and strategies that she can use to manage her emotions and actions. Miriam teaches Bea about the “feelings behind feelings” (74), which may not be obvious upon first glance and which requires some introspection to understand. The more that Bea thinks about her emotions, the more she understands that she was additionally afraid of losing the life she used to have and guilty over past mistakes like kicking Angelica. When Bea realizes that everyone else has forgiven her, she starts to forgive herself and resolve emotions that have been coiled up inside of her for a long time. It becomes a process of self-discovery and maturing, and when Bea looks back, she barely even recognizes the person she used to be. She knows now that she has grown out of her tendencies to lash out and react with anxiety, but she also knows that she still has much to learn.
The Effects of Parental Divorce in Childhood
Bea’s story is one of divorce and remarriage and the effects and changes that result in Bea’s life. Divorce is a common stressor in children, as it means unexpected instability in a child’s home life. Children of divorce suddenly face a tumultuous new schedule of traveling between houses, conflict between parents, and a lack of “wholeness” they once perceived in their family unit. Despite the stress this experience puts Bea through, the story does not suggest that Bea’s parents should have stayed together. While divorce is a difficult obstacle for everyone involved, the underlying moral is that being true to oneself is imperative, even if it means a difficult transition period. Bea’s parents’ divorce affected Bea in a number of ways, while she ultimately grew to adapt to the changes and embrace the positive outcomes.
The year Bea’s dad moved out and her parents divorced is the year she cited as the beginning of her worrying and her trouble sleeping. Bea especially had trouble sleeping at her dad’s apartment at first, because everything felt new and strange: “Those first months at Dad’s, it was like I had to build a hundred bridges, from me to every new pieces of furniture, every new lamp, every new fork, even the bathroom faucets and the lock on the door, until, slowly, all of Dad’s new things stopped feeling wrong” (22). She would often wake up in the middle of the night and sleep on her dad’s floor so that she didn’t feel alone. Around this time, Bea also developed eczema, which gets worse when she neglects it or puts her hands under hot water—both things she does when she is anxious or sad. Bea also sees reminders of her mother everywhere, especially at the lake cabin where her whole family used to go together. She notices that her dad doesn’t seem to miss her mom, and everything about her family dynamic now feels confusing.
Bea has to adjust to having two sets of rules, two schedules, and two homes. She compares this to the two moons she saw out her window as a little girl, and she feels like she lives in two different worlds. Fortunately, as Lizette points out, Bea’s parents still get along, but that doesn’t change the fact that she must adjust to many changes and is only eight years old when it all begins. Bea sometimes lashes out physically when she becomes too upset, and she always regrets doing so. Bea talks to a therapist named Miriam who helps her with her emotions and with understanding the divorce and its consequences. Bea uses this knowledge to help Sonia, who is going through the same thing as her, but to an even greater extent since Sonia’s mom lives across the country. Bea and Sonia develop an understanding between one another because of their shared experiences, which becomes one of the positives that arises out of the divorce. The other major positive that comes out of Bea’s parents’ divorcing is that Bea’s dad marries Jesse and they are happy together. Bea comes to see her father’s decision as brave and Jesse as the perfect person to offer her dad what he needs in life. While the effects of divorce greatly impacted Bea during these years, she comes to understand why it needed to happen and why life couldn’t continue as it was before. This ability to cope with the divorce and embrace the changes marks a newfound maturity in Bea’s character.
The Stability of Unconditional Love in Families
Bea remains supportive and open to the changes she experiences as her father comes out as gay and begins dating Jesse, but she is still whisked into a new home environment that looks entirely different from all she had previously known. This instability, among other triggers, causes Bea to fear change, and familial and friendship conflicts, as she scrambles to keep everyone happy and on good terms. Bea is fearful of numerous obstacles she comes across as the family blends together as one, desperately hoping to maintain cohesion. Bea is eventually anchored in her life through the unconditional love she receives and the love she observes between those closest to her.
Bea is grounded by the unconditional familial love in her life, and this is reinforced when she discovers conditional love. Despite the rift in her family caused by the divorce, the love never ceased and the bond never broke apart. This unconditional love in Bea’s life is juxtaposed with Jesse’s experience. Mission and Jesse’s parents could not accept the fact that he was gay and asked him to either hide it or risk losing them as family. This harmed Jesse emotionally for many years. Bea starts to realize that sometimes family members remove themselves and that the connection cannot be repaired. This gives her great anxiety initially, but by the end of the story, Bea begins to let go of her determination to make people like Uncle Mission and Jesse remain close. She is able to better see the nuance in Jesse’s familial conflict, and she comes to understand that true family is not only made of marriage and bloodlines. Bea also experiences conditional love in some of her friendships and in her own extended family as her peers begin to make fun of Bea because of her gay father and because she is a child of divorce. Bea is eventually able to regulate her emotions better in these situations, realizing that negative opinions shouldn’t affect her and that others may reject her in life—and this is okay.
Bea learns how to show the unconditional love she receives in her family to others as well. During the wedding celebration, Bea announces, “We made a new family today. I think we should be dancing” (211), knowing that such a love is rare and worth celebrating, particularly after all the discrimination Jesse experienced from his own family. Bea also showed unconditional love to Sonia, who was hesitant about having a new family at first. She continued to write Sonia letters, express her excitement and gratitude at having a new sister, and did not let Sonia’s nervousness or occasional distancing stop her from showing Sonia how much she loved her already. Although it took a long time, Sonia eventually accepted Bea’s love and the two developed a bond over their shared experiences of divorce and starting a new family.
Through her parents’ divorce and her dad’s second marriage, Bea learns that a new familial experience doesn’t result in any less love or legitimacy. What brings all of these families together under one umbrella is the way that their members love and accept each other exactly as they are. Bea wishes that everyone could have this type of family: “It’s about the kind of love that doesn’t ask you to be anyone but who you are. Dad and Uncle Frank had that kind of love from the beginning. I wish everyone did” (216). She begins and ends her story the same way: with an anecdote about her dad and uncle listening to the corn grow. She chooses this particular story because despite its simplicity, it demonstrates a fundamental truth about what it means to love someone. There is an unspoken understanding and a connection that cannot be broken—this is unconditional love.
Unlock all 48 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 9,100+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Rebecca Stead
