Literary analysis and self-examination is the novel’s most overt theme. These two processes are of great importance to author Elif Batuman, who views them as interwoven, a view she makes clear both in her other writing and in this novel in particular. In her other work, Batuman has emphasized her view that novels, by nature, are interested in a main character’s struggle to find meaning in their confusing reality that’s as cohesive as that in the character’s favorite literature: “[T]he novel form is ‘about’ the protagonist’s struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a form as meaningful as his favorite books” (Batuman, Elif. The Possessed. ‎Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, p. 94). The last lines of Either/Or comment on the sensation of this achievement: “Was this the decisive moment of my life? It felt as if the gap that had dogged me all my days was knitting together before my eyes, so that, from this point on, my life would be as coherent and meaningful as my favorite books” (354).

It is in books that the character of Selin locates not only meaning but also the sense of order and coherence that her life seems to lack.