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Chapter 20: Will
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Five Feet Apart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Sacrifice
Death, Grief, and Guilt
Risk and Consequences
Survival, Terminal Illness, and Hope
Hardship and Family Dynamics
Summary
Analysis
Stella follows Poe into the kitchen where he’s baking a pie for everyone. He tells her that he and Michael are getting back together, and that they’re both going to Colombia to see Poe’s mom. Stella is so happy that she has to stop herself from hugging him; she shakes his hand through an oven mitt instead. Poe and Stella both cry tears of joy. They head back to sit with everyone else. As they’re eating dessert, Barb suddenly storms in the room. Enraged, she sends Poe, Will, and Stella back to their rooms. Barb says Will will be transferred out of the hospital the next day.
Poe comes to the same realization that Stella recently has, which is that they should try not to let their illness hold them back too much from valuable experiences. Barb, on the other hand, is unwavering about enforcing the rules. She doesn’t have the firsthand experience of being limited by cystic fibrosis, but she has seen the tragedy that can come from patients infecting each other.
Themes
Just before midnight, Stella suddenly wakes up to an alarm blaring. An announcement says “Code Blue,” which means someone’s heart has stopped. It’s Poe. Panicked and confused, Stella follows Barb, Julie, and a team of emergency responders into Poe’s room. Staff members drag Stella back as she screams, but Poe’s door closes in her face. She hears Barb call for a defibrillator and then an intubation tray. Will and Stella wait outside Poe’s room. Dr. Hamid comes, and when she opens Poe’s door Stella sees that Poe is lifeless, and the team has stopped trying to resuscitate him.
A defibrillator is a device that uses electricity to restart a heart that spontaneously stops beating, and intubation is used when a patient is unable to breathe on their own. Poe’s death is sudden and shocking—he was at Will’s birthday party just hours before. This reminds Stella and Will of the reality that cystic fibrosis can be unpredictable, and anyone who has it can die at any time even if they do all their treatments correctly.
Themes
Stella screams, crying, as she runs back to her room. Will follows her. Stella shouts in anger that Poe’s parents and boyfriend will never see him again, and that she never hugged him even though he was her best friend. Will reaches out to Stella but he gets so close that he almost touches her. She pushes him back and screams at him to leave. Now alone, Stella destroys her room, tearing photos down from her wall, ripping off her sheets, and throwing all her belongings onto the floor. She cries all night on a bare mattress, feeling unable to escape grief.
Stella is devastated by her loss, of course, but she is also angry about the injustice of cystic fibrosis. It prevented Poe from having valuable human connections, and it continues to limit Stella in the same way. Will seems to reach out to Stella without thinking, momentarily forgetting to stay five feet away. Eventually, Poe’s death helps Stella come to terms with the fact that death is inevitable, which in turn frees her from the fear and guilt she feels about her own eventual death.
Themes
Morning comes and Stella ignores the notifications on her phone. She thinks about how she was always prepared for her own death, but never expected to endure so much grief. It feels unbearable. Stella walks through the halls and sees Michael crying as he collects Poe’s things. She considers that spending so much time obsessing over her treatments was wasteful, because she will die before her parents no matter what. Stella goes to the roof and sees Will in his room with his things packed. She looks towards the holiday lights in the park.
Again, even though Poe’s death is tragic, it helps Stella reframe her ideas around death in a healthy way. The holiday lights symbolize the experiences that cystic fibrosis patients miss out on. Stella looking towards the lights indicates that she is going to try to experience things that she previously felt she couldn’t due to her illness.
Themes
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