Themes

More specific than Bach's advice is the book's implication that if one does what he likes and ignores everything else, he will be fulfilled and transcend even death with few problems. Stated directly, this message seems naive and impossible. But as the book heightens and oversimplifies, the reader can complicate the meaning as he wishes, accepting the allegory conditionally and concluding that its emotion-laden implications might well be true.

One reason the reader might do this is that the book's themes are presented mystically. As the story progresses, the reader may, largely subconsciously, call up his own connotations of the many value words sprinkled through the book — speed, love, excellence, discovery ("breakthrough"), time, and knowledge. These names accumulate energy and merge into a diffuse unity at the end. As he reaches perfection, Jonathan finds it applying to virtually everything: perfect speed, love, honor, freedom, wisdom, truth, self-esteem...