Content Warning: This section discusses life in and escape from a cult, abortion, death, and suicidal ideation.

The primary theme in The Invisible Hour is the liberating power of literature. Literature figures prominently in the motifs, symbols, and characterizations; further, the magical talisman that influences the plot on various levels is the copy of The Scarlet Letter that Mia finds in the Blackwell Library. The Community’s strict rules against novels and the punishments related to those rules signify the necessity of withholding literature to maintain control over a population. Mia’s narrative arc suggests that literature’s ability to engage imaginations and open minds results in an interior intellectual freedom against which even the harshest physical controls are powerless.

For Mia, literature is literally lifesaving, emphasizing that literature’s power is physical, not just metaphorical. When Ivy dies and Mia intends to die by suicide, she begins reading The Scarlet Letter at the riverbank and almost immediately regrets her plan. She chooses to live because of the book, and later, when the book begins to disappear, she does too, indicating that her survival is intrinsically connected to literature. Mia’s career as a librarian supports her and provides her with financial independence—something Ivy never had.