Opposite of Always

Dancing represents joy. When Jack and Kate fall in love, they bond over their shared bad dance moves and lack of grace. They have bad dance parties in Kate’s dorm and bust cheesy moves at prom. In doing so, they shed their social anxieties and fears of being imperfect and enjoy being together and moving their bodies. Jack realizes that no matter how many do-overs he gets, he can’t make everything exactly the way he thinks it should be. He realizes he must embrace the good things he does have and find happiness however he can. Jack’s goal becomes letting go of the idea of perfection and expiring joy, which is symbolically embodied in the act of dancing. He says his favorite part of Black family movies is when they end with a big dance scene, with everyone “happy and smiling and dancing their asses off” (448). Jack ends his story with a scene of him and Kate dancing poorly but with joy because he chooses to be happy with her at this moment.

Many important scenes in Jack and Kate’s relationship include descriptions of stars in the night sky. In addition to creating a romantic mood, their presence also builds a symbolic connection between stars and love. Jack articulates this symbolism when he uses the idea of celestial orbits as an analogy for falling in love: “So the earth rotates around the sun, right? And it would be super weird for it to start happening the other way around, right? Like, suddenly the sun starts revolving around the earth—Except that’s sorta like what loving someone is all about” (312). The analogy additionally functions to show that just as a person can’t change the orbit of the earth around the sun or move the stars in the sky, loving someone can’t stop them from dying. Mortality is as much a part of life as the stars in the sky, but it’s especially hard to accept when a loved one dies—or is at risk of dying—at a young age. Jack’s journey toward this acceptance and the symbolic role of stars develop the theme of Loving Someone with a Chronic Illness.