The Last Letter From Your Lover

“You think I’m a bad person.”

Ellie responds to her friend Douglas questioning her having an affair with a married man, John. Having decided to have a child with his partner, Douglas worries about the effect on John’s child and wife. This scene also raises the question of how far people can or should comment on the love life of their friends.

“[C]ommunication was morphing into something dangerously flaccid and ugly.”

The opinion of John, a writer of novels. He is concerned that contemporary life is degrading language and the way we communicate with each other. This is ironic though because his messages to Ellie exhibit precisely the traits he is criticizing.

“Her husband—this man, this stranger.”

The evening after having returned home from hospital, Jennifer hears her husband getting ready for bed, and realizes he will get in with her. This causes her anxiety because her amnesia means she still does not properly recognize Laurence. On a deeper level, she is re-experiencing the alienation from him that existed before her crash.