Every Day Literary Elements

Young Adult Fiction, Romance, Fantasy

Present-day Maryland

A, a disembodied spirit who switches bodies each day, narrates from the first-person perspective.

The tone is ultimately hopeful and romantic, although there are moments of sorrow and tension.

A, a disembodied spirit, is the protagonist. Reverend Poole and Nathan Daldry are the antagonists

A and Rhiannon are in love, but the unique conditions of A's existence pose obstacles to their relationship. Rhiannon and A must decide if a romantic relationship is possible between them, or if the inconstancy of A's situation makes a successful relationship impossible. At the same time, A must diffuse the conflict with Nathan, whose escalating claims of devil possession threaten to expose and harm A. When Nathan involves an enigmatic reverend who offers A the possibility of remaining in host bodies for longer than one day, A must also fight a moral battle against this temptation to prioritize A's own personal desires over the lives of the hosts.

The climax of the story occurs when A overcomes the temptation to permanently take over a host body to be with Rhiannon, instead running away from Reverend Poole's offers and letting Rhiannon go.

The novel includes several instances of foreshadowing that hint at the story's conclusion. One example of foreshadowing is A and Rhiannon's conversation about The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. In this discussion, both A and Rhiannon condemn the excessively selfless acts of the tree and the insatiably selfish acts of the boy, concluding that love should not involve this type of unhealthy sacrifice. This conversation hints at the conclusion of A and Rhiannon's relationship, which comes about when A realizes they are both sacrificing too much to be together.

When A and Rhiannon spend a disastrous date struggling to connect due to Rhiannon's inability to feel attraction to A's host body, Rhiannon claims it is "just an off night" (275). This statement is a major understatement, as this point in the novel represents the boiling point of the tensions between A and Rhiannon, leading to Rhiannon's decision to end things.

The novel contains several literary allusions, including references to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, and S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. Levithan also includes references to music, such as Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon."

An example of paradox in the novel is the fact that the actions A takes to get closer to Rhiannon sometimes end up distancing Rhiannon emotionally from A. For example, when A ditches a host's day at school to drive to Rhiannon's town to visit her, Rhiannon accuses A of being unfair to the host, which adds tension to their meeting. As the tensions between A and Rhiannon mount, A begins to disregard the needs of hosts more in order to drive to visit Rhiannon, which ultimately contributes to Rhiannon's belief that the obstacles to their relationship are insurmountable.

The novel includes several instances of grammatical parallelism. One example is the sentence "the ocean makes its music; the wind does its dance" (15). In this sentence, both independent clauses follow the same grammatical structure. In another instance, Levithan writes, "She navigates, I drive. She talks, I listen" (23). These sentences again follow the same, parallel structure.

Levithan includes several instances of personification in the novel. In his description of the scenery during A and Rhiannon's drive to the beach, Levithan writes "the leaves haven't begun to change, but you can tell they're starting to think about it" (10). Later in the novel, when music that reminds A of Rhiannon plays on a car radio, Levithan writes, "the universe nods along to the songs" (52). Additionally, when A struggles to avoid Nathan's questions, A admits this cannot last forever, as the questions "will start to dig into [A]," and "will follow [A] wherever" A goes (115).