What Is The Theme Of Anxious People By Frederik Backman

Anxious People is a heart-wrenching novel by Frederik Backman about a failed bank robbery birthed from one ridiculous mistake and its effect on each character. As the failed robbery quickly transforms into a hostage situation, each character learns more about themselves and their anxieties. As Backman traverses through the story, he weaves in the motif of a heart to depict the importance of accepting the imperfections in relationships, in addition to the fragility of the bonds that are easily formed by seemingly small objects.
Backman starts off the story by creating this motif of the heart, which has a connotation of being strong and being a vital part of a body, to a bar of soap which is fragile, and unimportant. Giving a preface to the story,

Each character in this novel has a problem with relationships, whether it be with their significant other or a lack of one. As the bank robber is recounting her story, she comes across a core memory in which “[Once] the frog said she’d heard an adult on the bus say ‘love hurts’, the monkey replied that maybe that’s why hearts end up jagged when you try to draw them” Backman explains that everything is brought to the table with relationships, even every problem, and that the real test is being able to solve the problems together (Backman 62). Backman uses the word jagged to convey a sense of imperfection, as jagged objects are often broken and not whole, which can also be used to describe hearts. In addition to that, the fact that hearts appear jagged only when drawing is important as Backman aims to elucidate that with drawings, the heart may end up imperfect the first time, however the first sketch is never the final, meaning that each person should be able to work on each imperfection and be able to draw up a new heart after many and many tries. As Backman aims to conclude the novel, he states that “a child loves you unconditionally and uncontrollably for one simple reason: you’re theirs. Your parents and siblings … for precisely the same reason.” Again Backman implements the motif of a heart, but this time it is about family and how love in a family may be difficult but it is unconditional. Even when the bank robber says she cannot be angry at her alcoholic mother, we see that unconditional love, despite her mother not being able to help her with her problem, depicts each person's willingness to work with each