57 pages • 1 hour read
Too Late
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Themes
Love as a Source of Courage
At the beginning of the novel, Sloan is best able to describe love in terms of what it is not. Asa claims to love Sloan, and initially she thinks she loves him. Unfortunately, however, Sloan’s perspective of love is a result of how little of it she has experienced. Her mother may have loved her, but she also put her children at risk rather than being the parent they needed.
Luke gives Sloan a new, revelatory understanding of love when he tells her, “The only thing love relies on for survival is respect. And you don’t get that from him” (99). When she realizes Luke is worried about her safety, she thinks, “No one should have to experience a life never feeling truly cared for—not even by the parents who created them. Yet I’ve lived that for twenty-one years now. Until this moment” (86). She has so much experience with warped versions of love that she can scarcely believe how far she has been led astray when she listens to Luke’s toast:
Love is not found. Love finds…Love finds you in the forgiveness at the tail end of a fight. Love finds you in the empathy you feel for someone else. Love finds you in the embrace that follows a tragedy. Love finds you in the celebration after the conquering of an illness. Love finds you in the devastation after the surrender to an illness (150).
In short, love is everything that Luke is willing to offer Sloan and everything that Asa can never provide.
Luke helps Sloan realize that “love shouldn’t feel like added weight. It should make you feel as light as air. Asa made everything in my life heavy” (276). That heaviness has made it harder for her to be brave. If love leads to courage, then lack of love clearly leads to its inverse. It is understandable why Sloan has not been able to break free from Asa.
Change also requires courage, which is a strong argument against why Asa is unlikely to develop emotionally or leave his lifestyle. Truly loving Sloan would require Asa to change fundamental aspects of himself through diligent work, humility, and self-awareness. Once she is with Luke, Sloan finds that love is a galvanizing force that can help her do anything. She and Luke can make any changes they need to for the sake of love, and that love makes their challenges feel less like frightening, compromising sacrifices.
Surviving Abusive Relationships
Luke knows that one of abuse’s most reliable patterns is that it escalates. Instances where a person commits an abusive act, promises not to do it again, and then keeps their word are rare. Luke thinks, “It’s the harmless moments like these that, if they occur often enough, will end up being a hell of a lot more than just harmless” (36). This is how Sloan winds up trapped in her situation, which she compares to incarceration: “This house doesn’t follow the same rules as the outside world. This is a prison with its own set of rules. And Asa is the warden. Always has been” (107). Like a prison warden, Asa makes Sloan’s choices for her. His duty, as he sees it, is to shape her into something that is non-threatening and acquiescent. He views Sloan as an object.
Luke professes confusion about why she doesn’t leave Asa, even though he should understand given how often he claims to have seen abusive relationships. If Sloan tries to escape, she—or people she cares about—will suffer the consequences. She would leave if it were as simple as actually leaving, but it rarely is.
The extent of Asa’s entrapment is worse than Sloan originally thinks. He targets her and then grows obsessed with what he calls her innocence. Then Asa makes her financially dependent on him in deceiving her about Stephen’s benefits. Finally, he impregnates her without her consent after tampering with a condom. Asa is always capable of making the ends justify the means: As Luke observes, “You see nothing outside the realm of yourself when you’re a sadistic narcissist” (167).
After Asa squeezes Sloan’s arms in front of Luke, leaving bruises, she feels “like [she’s] been branded” (59). The bruises symbolize Asa’s sense of ownership over her, as well as her own lack of agency in this escalating situation. He perpetuates the cycle of abuse by isolating her, keeping her busy with chores, tracking her movements, and threatening her whenever she fails to reassure him quickly enough about his insecurities.
In Too Late, Sloan hasn’t fully escaped from Asa once he is dead, but her therapy, and her words at his funeral, suggest she is on her way. Her decision to include Asa’s recipes in her cookbook may be as good a sign as any that she is healing.
Self-Worth and Empowerment
Abusers have an innate understanding of how to chip away at the self-worth of their partners. Asa reduces Sloan to a state where she measures her successes solely against whether she has placated him well enough to make it through another day without harm.
There is no opportunity for empowerment without some personal success and growth, and Asa takes these opportunities from Sloan. She is not oblivious to her reality: “I cried for the fact that I allow him to do what he does to me. I cried for the fact that I feel like I have no other choice. I cried for the fact that I’m still with him, despite the person he’s become” (44). Yet the fact that she can intellectually understand that she does not deserve his abuse does not empower her to walk out on him and face the consequences.
Luke, unlike Asa, instantly makes Sloan feel treasured and special, but he quickly gives her reasons to assume that he is like other men who have disappointed her. One of her first steps toward self-empowerment comes in the sentence she leaves for him on the whiteboard: “He unclenched his fists and dropped her worries, unable to catch them for her. But she picked them back up and dusted them off. She wants to be able to hold them herself now” (96). Sloan’s message is playful, but it also asserts that she doesn’t need anyone else to save her or protect her from her worries.
The trajectory of Sloan’s empowerment follows a series of choices she makes for herself. Whether the choices are “right” or “wrong” is irrelevant: She chooses instead of letting Asa dictate her actions. She chooses to flirt with Luke, to go to the restaurant with him, and to leave the message for him on the whiteboard. She chooses to assert her boundaries when he invites her to move in with him. She chooses to begin work on the cookbook, and she chooses to forgive Asa at his funeral.
One of Sloan’s most empowering moments is when she says, “I’m done thinking about you, Asa Jackson” (268). She will no longer cede the territory of her mind and emotions to him. Managing life with an abusive partner is antithetical to a strong sense of self-worth because the self can vanish or become unrecognizable. When an abuser transforms someone into something unrecognizable, questions of self-worth are premature. Luke helps Sloan remember who she is, and who she wanted to be, which allows her to reclaim her identity and judge herself worthy of love.
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