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Jessi OConnell
English 114B
Professor J. Rodrick
23 April 2016
Unmarked
The age old war between free will and destiny has been a common theme, as well as a
cold war, between humanity, amongst the humans inhabiting the planet earth. Fate has always
been a tricky topic that has been thought about for decades upon decades, haunting the living on
whether or not the lives in which the world contains is controlled by them or controlled by a
greater force that seems to escape the minds of simple beings. Through the book Every Day by
David Levithan, the main character is a bodiless, and genderless, soul who inhabits a different
body every 24 hours only once. The main character, A, endures through many trails and triumphs
that force A to question the role of destiny and the role of free will. Through As struggles, the
soul fights to find out about the beauty of free will through love, order, and chaos, hoping to
create answers in the world that is full of mysteries and symbols in lieu of descriptive, detailed
words providing solutions to the unknown.
According to Kerri Smith, author of Neuroscience vs. philosophy: Taking aim at free
will, she writes about how free will is a matter of the mind. As humans, we like to think that
our decisions are under our conscious control that we have free will, (Smith, pg.1). Free will
is, to A, a matter of the mind, as well as a matter of the heart. In the book, love is a huge trial for
A as A finds entanglements with a girl named Rhiannon. A met her while inhabiting her exboyfriend, Justin, while A was a 16 year old soul in Annapolis, Maryland. Before Rhiannon, A
used to live a life full of rules, containment, and order. Yet, just like love usually does, it came
into As world and ruined lines that were once black and white and blurred them grey. In
Levithans book, A thought of love as the following when lying down next to Rhiannon on the

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beach: Its one thing to fall in love. Its another to
feel someone else falling in love with you, and to feel
a responsibility toward that love, (Levithan, pg. 24).
Love is this idea that is double-sided; one can always
give it, but to receive it is such a treasure that it must
be kept safe and secured; it must never be broken
even though it is as fragile as glass. Love has always been a tricky idea to the mind, but it tends
to get even more messed up when destiny and free will come into play. Some believe that love is
destined, that the right person is the soul mate and the two people were separated, and once they
found each other they never realized how they ever lived apart. Yet, in As experience, it was
more likely free will, due to the fact that A chose to be with Rhiannon despite the difficulties that
having a relationship with her would exhibit. Some days, A would wake up four hours away from
Rhiannon, like on day 5996; other days A would wake up 15 minutes away from Rhiannon, like
on day 6007. One day, day 6015 to be exact, possibly fate screwing with their love, tried to really
throw a bump in the road for the young lovebirds when A woke up in the body of Rhiannon. I
wake up and Im not four hours away from her, or one hour, or even fifteen minutes. / No, I wake
up in her house. / In her room. / In her body, (Levithan, pg. 188). Perhaps in this instance
though, fate did have a name and a face; the soul of David Levithan throwing his readers off
from the path and adding a detour.
Order is key to life, or so maybe thought A before Rhiannon entered with all of her
complications. Before Rhiannon, A would never disrupt a persons life, implant memories, or
even start to remember past inhabitants from more than 48 hours previously to the moment A
was currently in. A tried not to forget who A was, no matter how insignificant it might seem or if

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nobody even knew who A was; to A, order was key. Order can fall in line with free will as well.
It might not seem as common with free will, like maybe spontaneity (even though A does act
spontaneously throughout the duration of the book, like when A and Rhiannon decided to leave
the world behind and go to the beach rather than stay at school
on [Levithan, pgs. 9-23]), but order is something that A chose to
do with each body that A was in. A chose not to ruin any lives,
but then A also disobeyed the rules that was set out by A alone
when it came to Rhiannon, which ties back into the whole love
thing. Its hard

being in the body of someone you dont like, because you still

have to respect itSo I try to be careful, (Levithan, pg. 2). One single slip up could destroy the
inhabitants life forever possibly.
Through order comes chaos, or perhaps through chaos comes order. In Levithans book,
Every Day, however, chaos was derived from the love that was sprung from too much order in
As life. From order came chaos, and through this chaos free will was found. As Dr. Normand
Holland wrote in This is Your Brain on Culture, there is no stability in life. Reality is
continuously changing, and its changes perturb our mental functioning which is also
continuously changing, (Holland, par. 8). Life never stops, it is ever-changing and continuously
moves on without halting, just like time. Through this book, As life evolves and adapts and
eventually the soul finds itself entangled in chaos; stranded far away from the order it once used
to live in.
The form of chaos that was predominantly seen throughout the book was the scandal with
the characters Nathan and Reverend Poole. Nathan was a boy A had inhabited and took control
with serious measures. A drove an hour and a half in Nathans body to get to a party to see

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Rhiannon for a few hours. Through this dangerous task, A could not get back to Nathans home
before midnight and ended up pulling over on the side of the road to safely depart from Nathans
body. When Nathan was woken up by police officers asking if he was drunk, he swore he was
possessed by the devil, but not just any devil spirit; this devil was the actual angel who was
thrown out of heaven, the Morningstar Lucifer devil. Through this fiasco being blown out of
proportion, and through Nathans own choice which was free will Reverend Poole got sucked
into the chaos as well. The reverends part in this was the fact that he also was a bodiless,
genderless soul like A, but the difference was that Reverend Pooles invader could inhabit beings
for more than 24 hours at a time. It freaked out A and forced the young soul to be think of a
decision with free will; A could either provoke more chaos into the world, or run from the chaos
and destruction that is being dragged out among the humans unwillingly and unknowingly.
Reverend Poole stated, on day 6028, You have no idea the power you possess, (Levithan, pg.
289). A, and others like A, have so much control within their bodiless selves, the damage that
could be done by them is unsurmountable and unimaginable.
Though all is fair in love and war, or as Francis Edmund Smedley wrote it originally, the
rules of fair play do not apply in love and war (Lyly, pg. 24), free will and destiny have always
been one for the books. It is a classic theme, and is a war that has no end. Perhaps only the
deceased know whether the humans individually chose how they themselves lived, or if it really
was all designed for the people with set paths and roads all clearly, yet unclearly, marked. I guess
maybe it is like the owl said in the Tootsie Roll commercial, The world may never know. Yet,
the world might know this, humans are always given a choice, and that fork in the road is always
chosen by free will. It is always the persons choice, and it might be tainted by other voices, but
the one voice that stands out is the actual person who stands in front of the crossroads. Whether it

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be from love, or order, or even chaos, the
choice is always there. The choice is a sign that
marks free will, even if the world only talks in
riddles and hints and mysteries.
There is always a choice to be made with a voice who decides it all, and that is what
David Levithan gave to A: a choice, with a voice.

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