Identity, Selfhood, and Mental Illness Theme Analysis

While questions of identity are par for the course in coming of age novels and young adult novels alike, Turtles All the Way Down goes a step further in exploring the subject of identity. Rather than simply questioning who she is, Aza is consumed by more fundamental and heady questions about whether she exists at all and how much control, if any, she has over her own thoughts, actions, or circumstances.

Aza's questions of identity and control are complicated by the fact that she struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a mental illness that makes her feel as though she's not in control of her own thoughts. Aza conceptualizes her OCD as a demon or evil alter-ego that rises up at intervals to remind her about the teeming bacteria inside and around her, the wound on her finger, or the dangers of kissing (and sharing bacteria with another person). The demon is only one instance in which the reader sees that Aza think of herself as a being who isn't singular: rather, she sees herself as possessing many separate and different identities. These multiple identities are represented by the different names Aza responds to, as well as the voice of the demon itself. To Mom and to Davis, Aza goes by her first name, while to her best friend Daisy, she's Holmesy, and to other students at school, she's Ms. Holmes' daughter. In Daisy's fanfiction stories, Aza's personality shows up in a character named Ayala—and although Aza hates Ayala, she begins to consider Ayala a part of herself. These different names crystallize Aza's belief that she's not in control of herself as a single, autonomous being. The voice of her demon takes this one step further, as the demon truly exists only in Aza's head—it's actually a part of her own mind, not just a different name that people call her. Particularly when she's in the hospital after a car accident, the text of the novel becomes a block of dialogue between Aza and her demon as they argue about drinking hand sanitizer, underscoring the way in which Aza's very sense of self is split into distinct personae.

Although Aza's questions about identity are complicated by her demon, she's entirely unable to think of herself as a single autonomous person even when her demon is quiet. She tells the reader early on that the human body is about 50% bacteria, or organisms that are decidedly not human. Although this is objectively true, this fact is only terrifying to her because of her struggles with mental illness. It's significant that Aza thinks of herself as being made up not only of different identities, but literally of different beings. She's obsessed with the relationship between her bacteria and her self, and becomes particularly agitated when she learns that the brain and the bacteria in one's stomach communicate with each other. For Aza, this is proof that she's not in control of her own thoughts: her bacteria are running the show. They have actual power to influence what and how she thinks, and there's no way for her to know which thoughts are truly hers and which thoughts belong to the bacteria. Aza suffers another bacteria-related identity crisis when she kisses Davis. After a frantic internet search, Aza learns that Davis' bacteria will not just be inside her forever, but will actually permanently alter her microbiome. This is terrifying for Aza. It was one thing for her to know that she herself is made up of multitudes, but it's another thing entirely for her to learn that other people have the ability to actually add to and alter her identity.

Aza's therapist, Dr. Singh, humors Aza's musings about singularity and her paranoia about who's actually running her mind during their therapy sessions. However, Dr. Singh encourages Aza to see herself as an "integrated plurality" and uses the metaphor of a rainbow that is made up of many colors. Although it takes Aza the entirety of the novel to see the wisdom of Dr. Singh's suggestion, that's eventually what happens: Aza begins to integrate her different identities by taking her medication, something she was previously afraid of doing. Dr. Singh also tells Aza regularly that Aza's questions about identity "aren't uncommon," which alludes to the overarching idea that although Aza's struggle with mental illness is unique and makes her journey towards identity particularly difficult, the struggle to integrate seemingly opposite identities into one singular being is a struggle that all young people face. At the end of the novel, adult Aza suggests that she did indeed manage to integrate her many identities into a cohesive whole—and indeed, the novel itself, written by Aza, is a testament to that.