55 pages • 1 hour read
Amy LeaWoke Up Like This
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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 Need for Empathy
Lea depicts young Char’s and J. T.’s incapacity for empathy early in the novel, and their character development conveys the importance of showing empathy toward others. In high school, they are 17 years old, and they struggle to interpret and predict each other’s emotions. For example, just prior to the hallway tampon episode, J. T. and Char squabble at their lockers, and it’s clear that they fail to understand one another, despite the social clues. J. T. purposefully races Char there, knowing that she cannot access her locker while he’s at his. He is joking around, while she is deadly serious; she doesn’t understand that he is misreading her rather than intentionally being a jerk, and, likewise, he doesn’t understand that she is getting genuinely frustrated, not just playfully so. This situation is emblematic of their inability to see a situation from the other’s perspective.
When Char and J. T. jump into their future, they can more adroitly engage in perspective taking as adults, and they are far more capable of interpreting each other’s emotions. When J. T. learns about his mother’s new boyfriend, Char “can tell from [his] expression that he didn’t know about this new guy,” and she “instinctively” puts her hand on J. T.’s shoulder (124). Now, Char can read J. T.’s feelings in his face without even speaking to him, and she responds in an automatic way to his surprise and dismay. As she comforts him, she is “surprised at the words coming out of [her] mouth. [She] never thought [she] could really relate to Renner” (125). Lea’s emphasis on this change in Char highlights the good that can come from learning how to empathize with others.
J. T. empathizes with Char’s feelings, too, especially relating to her father, and Char marvels at the “unfamiliar energy” between them that “feels a little bit like understanding” rather than rivalry (125). Lea’s presentation of J. T.’s and Char’s learning to navigate complex social dynamics suggests that learning to empathize with others is an important part of growing up.
The Unexpected Joy and Pain of Growing Up
Char and J. T. both experience unexpected joy and pain when they leap forward in time. Certainly, they have more independence and freedom—no more bedtimes or curfews—and J. T. helps Char to understand how much fun they can have. After visiting Alexandra and the girls, Char doesn’t want to go home, and J. T. assures her they don’t have to, saying, “We can do whatever we want” (195). They go to a candy store and fill two bags to the top, representing childish joy that need not be quashed in adulthood. They also play car hide-and-seek with Ollie and others after chaperoning the 2037 prom, and they even have a food fight in their kitchen. Even if they feel that they don’t have a lot of choice, as Char’s mom feels, Lea suggests through this representation of childhood games in adulthood that adults can experience unbridled fun and joy.
The flip side, in the novel, is that growing up brings pain, too, some of which is unexpected. J. T. sees his parents move on and create new lives for themselves, something that makes them happy but hurts him. In addition, Char thinks that she and Kassie will be best friends forever, so when Char learns that she and Kassie are no longer friends, she is devastated. For her, “[e]verything has changed” for the worse (128), and she becomes even more desperate to return to their senior year so that she can prevent whatever has gone wrong in the friendship. Further, the loss of her father is equally upsetting. Though they have never been close, his obituary says that he died “suddenly” at 56, and Char is overwhelmed by grief and regret that she no longer has the opportunity to rebuild the relationship.
Lea ultimately suggests that adulthood brings with it new avenues for joy as well as pain and that both have to be accepted. As Char’s mom points out, adults have obligations that kids don’t. There is unexpected pain: Friends drift apart, important people die, and there are unpleasant obligations, which necessarily limit one’s freedom and opportunities. Adulthood isn’t all about staying up late and eating candy. However, Lea suggests that it can include those things if adults make certain choices because they have freedoms that kids don’t, and this can be really joyful if one seizes opportunities for fun.
The Importance of Being Present
The most important thing that Char learns from J. T. is living in the moment rather than worrying about the future or regretting the past. J. T., for example, seems to be “living his best life” when Char sees him teaching gym class in the future (108), and this is because he allows himself to enjoy it without worrying about what comes next. Char, however, is always planning—how they will get back, how she will organize the perfect prom, how she will ask Clay to prom—and this often prevents her from enjoying the moment she’s actually in. She finds herself living in the moment a great deal more when she jumps to the future because she can hardly know what will come next, and she is forced to relinquish her sense of control. After a few days in the future, she says that “tomorrow” is “the last thing [she] want[s] to think about” (202). Lea uses time travel to make the novel’s temporality more conspicuous and emphasize the novel’s lessons about focusing on the present moment.
Living in the moment not only gives Char a sense of comfort, but it also allows her to let go of past resentments. Normally, thinking of the unknown makes her very uncomfortable, but if she stays in the present, she doesn’t need to think of it. Having fun with J. T. feels “like someone’s wrapped [her] in a heated blanket when [she] didn’t know [she] was cold” (203). This tactile description makes her experience more immediate, emulating the immediacy of the present. Likewise, when she returns to 2024, she still feels mad at her father, but turning down the opportunity to revive their relationship “doesn’t sit right” (220). Thinking about how her chance to reconnect has a time limit allows her to let go of the resentment she was carrying for years. Being present in the moment doesn’t leave room for harboring old bitterness. Char goes through something similar with Kassie; she knows that she’ll never forget how Kassie lied to her, but she also doesn’t waste energy on holding a grudge.
Ultimately, this lesson about being present is so vital, and becomes so central to Char’s character, that it is what she writes to herself about in her time capsule letter. She encourages herself not to let goals inhibit her enjoyment of the present and not to dwell on the past because being in the moment is the only way “to experience life to the fullest” (286). This is the sentiment that ends the novel with a hopeful tone.
