Olive Kitteridge is a very no-nonsense, pragmatic woman. Her love of color and natural beauty might be surprising. However, she also has a rich inner, emotional life, and is deeply sensitive and empathetic. When Olive is happiest or most herself, the text reflects this through color. At the beginning of the book, in “Labor,” Olive is wearing a jacket that she had made the previous day, out of a “quilted blue-and-white swirling fabric” (22). She feels great pride in her colorful new jacket, which parallels her flourishing new relationship with Jack. At the end of the novel, Olive wants to plant a rosebush in her yard. Her growing contentment and new friendships at the senior apartments enables her to show her true colors; she puts them on full display with her rosebushes. They take root and bloom, even better than she expected, as she does.

In this collection, light represents understanding and illumination. Throughout the stories in Olive, Again, the characters seek knowledge of themselves, their lives, and their relationships, and experience flashes of understanding. In Cindy Coombs’ story “Light,” Cindy believes that the quality of light is something that only she appreciates. Light strikes her powerfully: “You could see how at the end of each day the world seemed cracked open and the extra light made its way across the stark trees, and promised.