47 pages • 1 hour read
Abbi GlinesUntil Friday Night
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A 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
Coping With Grief and Trauma
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s depiction of grief and trauma, controlling behavior, domestic violence that results in death, and mental illness.
The novel explores the difficulty of Coping with Grief and Trauma via Maggie Carlton’s and West Ashby’s experiences with loss. Glines addresses the nuanced experiences of both characters, depicting a range of reactionary feelings and coping skills. Both Maggie and West lose a family member, and these plotlines play an important role in the young adult genre, partly because of teenagers’ proximity to family and the likelihood of familial complications and trauma in a young person’s life. While depictions of family life in stories are often positive, Glines doesn’t shy away from the traumatic reality some young people endure during their formative years.
Maggie’s form of coping is through silence, and throughout the novel, she begins to expand the range of people in her life she is willing to openly communicate with. Maggie watches her father kill her mother two years prior to the narrative present. Although time has passed since the tragedy, Maggie has remained silent ever since. “Keeping quiet is how [she’s] survived,” because there has been “no one to understand” what she went through (75). She continues to remain silent throughout the novel, because she doesn’t want her memories of her mother’s death “to come out with the sound of [her] voice” (56). This coping mechanism is a form of self-protection for Maggie. However, once she moves to Lawton, she begins to realize the ways that silence worsens her invisibility, isolation, and loneliness. Without her voice, the old version of herself who wouldn’t “take whatever anyone threw at her” disappears (56). Without her voice, she can’t stand up for herself, convey her story, or make new connections with others. Her family, classmates, and teachers make assumptions about her mental health and fail to relate to her. Therefore, Maggie doesn’t discover a route to healing until she meets, starts talking to, and grows close with West. Through this relationship, she realizes that communication and closeness can help one withstand tragedy, too. By the end of the novel, she is able to communicate her boundaries with her new family and establish that talking doesn’t necessarily mean that she will be talking about her trauma. This is a duality she had trouble separating initially, but she ultimately comes to understand a life beyond these limitations and feels comfortable discussing her trauma on her own terms, when she is ready.
Maggie uses her experiences with loss and sorrow to help West cope with his father’s illness and death, and it is this connection that sparks Maggie communication initially. As soon as Maggie encounters West at the field party in Chapters 2 and 3, she recognizes a heaviness in him that she’s “never seen in anyone but [her]self” before (20). The characters relate over their parallel trauma and grief in the ensuing weeks. Maggie not only starts talking to West, but she uses her past experiences to comfort, guide, and encourage him. She helps him to stay strong for his mom, authenticates his sadness and confusion, and lets him rely upon her whenever and however he needs. She becomes West’s coping mechanism in the same way that silence has been hers. However, as the protagonists’ relationship evolves, they learn that their grief and trauma can’t be the reason they’re together. Maggie has “wanted to be the shoulder [West] could lean on,” because she’s wanted him “to have everything [she] didn’t” when she was grieving (284). However, in Chapter 42, she insists that they redefine their relationship for the future and says that she doesn’t want to be his “crutch.” Together, they learn that while supporting one another through tragedy and loss is essential, it must be mutual. Therefore, the novel suggests that intimate relationships can help the individual heal. However, the individual must pursue independent healing, too. For West, that means asking his football network for support and talking about his feelings. For Maggie, that means opening up to her family and reclaiming her voice.
The Development of Teenage Romantic Relationships
Maggie and West’s relationship dynamic conveys the complexities of romantic relationships between teenagers. Maggie and West are attracted to one another from the moment they meet. West sees Maggie for her “gorgeous hair and [her] full lips,” while Maggie sees West as “beautiful and haunted” (17, 21). Therefore, their physical appearances are the impetus for their initial attraction. However, in the days and weeks following their first kiss at the field party, their connection proves deeper and more complex. In Chapter 7, for example, West makes it possible for Maggie to stand up for herself for the first time in two years. In Chapter 9, West then allows Maggie “to see him. His pain. His fears,” when he tells Maggie about his dad (69). West realizes that if Maggie “could survive what she had seen,” he can survive his dad’s sickness and impending death (76).
Maggie and West’s relationship is a complicated push and pull as both characters attempt to decipher the feelings of the other. Simultaneously, Maggie and West individually believe that the other person couldn’t possibly reciprocate their love. The unfamiliarity of romantic love to both characters leaves them blindly crossing new territory, unsure of the signs and staples of reciprocal love. This confusion is exacerbated by the high school setting, where infatuation is often impermanent and the busyness and school hours give the characters limited access to spend time with one another. Maggie and West learn to be friends before they eventually become sexually intimate. Their emotional closeness develops over time and creates pathways to physical and romantic connection. Indeed, the more time that they spend together, the more attached they become. They develop bonds based on experience, trauma, and vulnerability.
Maggie and West work to develop healthy boundaries in their new relationship over time. Initially, Maggie and West are codependent. They talk to one another for hours every night. They see each other at school, and struggle to be apart even for classes. They sneak into each other’s houses and go on drives together at night. Because they’ve shared their pain, their connection is possessive and distorted. They don’t realize the dysfunctional nature of their dynamic until Maggie starts to talk again. For example, when West tries to keep her from having conversations with her classmates, Maggie starts to worry that their relationship won’t last. Falling in love is new for both Maggie and West. Therefore, they’re learning how to navigate their intense feelings for each other and to make their relationship sustainable. In the early chapters of the novel, Maggie and West are overcome by their physiological responses to one another. By the end of the novel, however, they have learned how to make each other “feel whole inside” (306). Their alternating first person points of view convey the trajectory of their evolving dynamic. The interplay of their narrative voices enacts their parallel work to mutually understand, support, and love one another. Therefore, the narrative form reiterates the novel’s romantic themes. The characters must establish balance in their relationship, in the same way that their alternating points of view create one balanced and complete narrative whole.
The Role of Communication in Healing
Maggie’s and West’s experiences with loss and sorrow teach them the importance of communication. For Maggie, verbal communication is complicated and intimidating. Ever since she “witnessed [her] father kill [her] mother,” she’s chosen not to speak (70). Silence has been a way for her to avoid her memories of her father’s violence and mother’s death. Therefore, she uses her body language and written notes in order to communicate with those around her. Although these forms of communication feel comfortable, Maggie’s first months in Lawton make her realize that her silence is keeping her from forming new relationships with her friends and family. Meanwhile, West learns to communicate his feelings by listening to Maggie. Before meeting Maggie, West felt incapable of asking others for help. Maggie is the first person with whom he lets himself be vulnerable. He not only tells her about his dad’s sickness, but he also shares his fears of death and his anxieties about supporting his mother. Because Maggie recognizes West’s pain and need, she chooses to speak to him and help him through his grief. Together, the protagonists develop a rich form of communication that buoys them through their hardship. They find the understanding they need by sharing their stories with each other.
Maggie and West heal from their trauma by opening up not only to each other, but also to their friends and their family. Before they met, the protagonists hid their true feelings from everyone. Maggie holed up in her bedroom reading instead of talking to Boone, Coralee, and Brady. West used sex and drinking to mask his hurt and confusion. After they start talking to each other about their feelings, however, Maggie and West find the courage to talk to others about their emotional journeys. For example, Maggie decides to talk to her aunt, uncle, and cousin because she wants “to be a part of this family” and to pursue healing with them (268). West similarly learns the importance of communication to healing and understanding when he takes responsibility for his anger and expresses his love to Maggie in Chapter 46. Therefore, Maggie and West have learned that open communication is important to their romance and to their comprehensive emotional health. They teach each other how to express themselves clearly and how to let others in as they pursue continuous change and growth in the future. Their braided narratives illustrate how honest communication and vulnerability allow pathways to healing.
