45 pages • 1 hour read
Ellen Outside the Lines
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Themes
Accepting the Unpredictability of Life
Accepting the unpredictability of life is something that Ellen finds greatly challenging, but she gradually learns to embrace this mindset during the Barcelona trip. In the opening scene of the novel, her panic over Laurel’s failure to call her sets a baseline from which Ellen grows as the story progresses. In this moment, she panics over Laurel’s silence, and her doubts about her friendship with Laurel are strengthened when she worries that she is being completely abandoned. Ellen’s life is thrown off-course by the fact that Laurel ended up spending more time with her other friends and forgot to call Ellen. Thus, it is clear that many of Ellen’s difficulties come from the discrepancy between her expectations and her real-life experiences. When she begins the Barcelona trip, however, she must soon come to terms with the fact that no matter how much she tries to predict her future by researching Barcelona and the scavenger hunt, there is no way to predict what will happen. It is barely the first day when Ellen realizes that nothing about the trip will be like she imagined. The novel’s title, Ellen Outside the Lines, therefore emphasizes Ellen’s journey of learning to accept the surprises and unexpected twists that life inevitably offers.
In this context, Ellen stretches her boundaries when she joins a new team of people she does not know well. As they quickly become close, this new dynamic allows Ellen to feel safer as she navigates the unpredictable circumstances of the trip. Every place that the team visits brings unexpected surprises, and in many instances, Ellen becomes overwhelmed by the sounds, sights, and smells around her. She finds that she needs time to get used to new surroundings, and her teammates and Abba give her the patience and support that she needs to work through these challenges. As the days go on, Ellen finds that she actually prefers being on this team rather than with Laurel, and this realization proves to her that not every surprise is negative. At one point, Ellen pushes her own personal limits by going outside the hotel without permission. Although Ellen should not have broken the rules, she does so for to prove to herself that she can, understanding that some things are more important than following the rules. Throughout her time in Barcelona, Ellen comes to enjoy the unexpected and learns to accept that she cannot predict the future. By the end of the trip, she decides to approach her life one moment at a time, and she believes that she has increased her ability to adjust and adapt. She reflects on Gaudi’s quote, “Tomorrow we will do beautiful things” (323), and reminds herself that with good friends and some self-confidence, every day is bound to have beauty in it.
Finding Belonging Among Friends
This theme is a key component of adolescence and a central part of growing up. As children become teenagers, they break away from their families to an extent and find a new sense of independence and companionship among their peers. In Ellen’s world, Laurel has always been her best and only friend, and Ellen is emotionally unprepared for that to change. Even though she can already sense that she and Laurel are drifting apart, she hopes that the trip will become the perfect opportunity to reunite and rebuild their bond. Laurel and Ellen’s friendship is filled with shared memories that go all the way back to the third grade, and before the Barcelona trip, Ellen divides her life into two categories: the time before she knew Laurel and the time after meeting Laurel. Now, worries now that she is losing Laurel altogether, and because she has no other friendships, she fears that she will be left isolated and alone.
While Ellen fights to maintain her friendship with Laurel, she also starts to develop unexpected friendships with her teammates: Isa, Andy, and Gibs. These new connections introduce a crucial turning point into Ellen’s life, for when she starts to feel like she is a valuable member of this group of friends, she becomes conflicted about whether she should shift her loyalty to this new group or reserve it for Laurel. This inner conflict rages throughout the entire trip as Ellen shuffles awkwardly back and forth between the two groups. At first, Ellen doesn’t want to admit to herself or to anyone else that she actually prefers her new friends, but within a few days, she feels confident enough to begin letting go of Laurel in order to explore these new bonds. Isa, Andy, and Gibs offer Ellen a level of understanding and patience that Laurel never does, particularly when it comes to accommodating her autism and respecting her sexuality. Ellen feels judged by Laurel’s friends and never feels like she can be herself around them. Even so, Laurel and Ellen continue trying to force their friendship, but this misguided dynamic drives them further apart, and the friendship ultimately dissolves. Unlike Laurel, Ellen’s teammates are loyal and trustworthy, and they don’t pressure Ellen to betray her own morality. Isa is always pumping Ellen up and complimenting her, as well as supporting her when she needs the extra help. This sense of camaraderie and mutual support allows Ellen to redefine her new friend group and helps her to let go of Laurel.
Embracing Self-Discovery and Freedom of Expression
Self-discovery and freedom of expression go hand in hand, because self-discovery leads people to want to express their truest, innermost self without being judged or ridiculed. During her time in Barcelona, Ellen goes through a major period of self-discovery and learns why freedom of expression is such an important part of being human. This dynamic becomes particularly prominent when Isa who opens up Ellen’s worldview and teaches her new concepts about gender and sexuality. As Ellen discovers new ways to think about how people categorize and compartmentalize others, she starts to question things that she always took for granted or assumed to be fact. For example, she finds herself wondering, “If clothes don’t make you a boy or girl, what does? Hair? Makeup? And how do you know if you’re nonbinary?” (224). Isa graciously answers all of Ellen’s questions, and Isa’s own whole-hearted embrace of their true self makes them equally willing to help others discover what it means to be open and accepting. Ellen and Isa bond over the course of the trip and slowly get to know each other, which gives Ellen several opportunities to ask questions and find out how Isa sees gender and sexuality. Isa explains that they identify as nonbinary, which means that they don’t identify as either a boy or a girl. Ellen finds this concept unusual at first, but Isa happily allows Ellen the time she needs to reflect and understand it. Ellen eventually concludes that she too relates to the idea of they/them pronouns because she has never really fit in with girls like Laurel and Sophie-Anne.
As Ellen’s experiences indicate, freedom of expression encompasses more than gender and sexuality and also includes other aspects of a person’s personality and beliefs, such as their religion. By discovering her abba’s unique relationship with Judaism, Ellen learns that there is more than one way to be Jewish, and she realizes that approaching the religion from one’s own personal place of comfort and understanding is more important than following strict rules. She also finds out that her abba is attracted to men as well as to women, and this revelation further challenges her assumptions of her world and the people in it. Ellen has spent most of her life categorizing everyone and everything according to her own understanding, and she now realizes that this practice is both futile and limiting. As she admits, “I used to believe everything would make sense if I could just find a category to put it in. But I also believed Abba when he said identity isn’t always straightforward, that faith and relationships can be complicated. Now, my lists seem too simple, almost pointless” (287). Because Ellen is in a city that celebrates unique beauty and is enjoying the company of people who do the same, she grows as a person and discovers more about who she really is.
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