Communication and Miscommunication in In the Likely Event

Thematic Claim: Words Unspoken and Chances Lost

In In the Likely Event, Rebecca Yarros builds the central conflict not on external obstacles but on the characters’ repeated failures to say what they mean. Both Isabeau “Izzy” Astor and Nathaniel “Nate” Phelan are skilled at reading each other’s emotions—yet they consistently misinterpret intentions, hide painful truths, and avoid difficult conversations. Only when they finally voice their love, fears, and trauma do the miscommunications unravel, allowing the relationship to move from stolen moments to a shared future.

The Crash That Started Everything—and the Silence That Followed

The inciting event on Flight 826 forges an instant bond: Nate holds Izzy’s hand during takeoff, and they survive the crash together. In the immediate aftermath, communication is raw and physical—holding hands, focusing on music to stay calm. But as they recover separately, neither articulates the depth of what that shared trauma means. Their subsequent reunion three years later in New York (as shown in the epilogue flashback) reveals a pattern: they spend the night together but never define the relationship. The airplane crash symbolises a moment of perfect, wordless trust, yet it also becomes the reference point for all the things they don’t say. The iPod and music appear here as a coping mechanism—Nate knows Izzy needs songs to endure flight, but he never explains why he remembers that detail so precisely.

The Years of Letters: Intimacy Without Honesty

Over the next several years, Nate and Izzy maintain a long-distance correspondence through letters and book exchanges. The letters become a safe space—they share book recommendations, talk about their days, and express affection indirectly. But the letters also enable a form of miscommunication: Nate redacts parts of his life (combat experiences, the severity of his PTSD) to protect Izzy, and she in turn imagines romantic possibilities in the blank spaces. When he visits for her birthday in law school, he makes a list of future travel destinations—Palau, Peru, the Maldives—implying commitment without ever saying “I love you.” This is the misinterpreted proposal: to Izzy, the list feels like Nate is planning a future with her; to Nate, it is a way of promising a future if he can survive his deployments and therapy. He tells her “I can’t lose you” but refuses to let her in. This contradiction—deep emotional intimacy coupled with a refusal to speak the truth—keeps them in limbo for years.

The engagement ring symbol emerges here, albeit in absence. In the New York confrontation, Izzy’s father pressures her to break her lease and move, tying her to Jeremy Covington. The ring she later wears in Afghanistan is a material sign of the failed communication: she never explicitly tells Nate why she accepted Jeremy’s proposal, and Nate assumes the worst—that she has chosen the safe, settled life he could never give her. In reality, Izzy accepted out of family obligation and fear of Nate’s rejection. The ring becomes a physical manifestation of the unspoken bargain she has made.

Reunion in Kabul: The Surface Cracks

When they meet again in Afghanistan, the miscommunication multiplies. Izzy calls herself “Isa,” a distancing tactic; Nate still calls her “Izzy.” Each reads the other’s body language accurately—Nate sees her swollen eyes and knows she has been crying; Izzy reads his anger about Jeremy—but they speak in code. Nate’s question “When did you two get back together?” reveals his assumption that her engagement is built on a real relationship. Izzy’s defensive reply (“I don’t owe you an explanation”) prevents the truth about the sham engagement from surfacing. At the airport, the chess team’s arrival coincides with an explosion, and the real communication remains buried.

The turning point comes when Nate notices her bare ring finger—a silent clue that the engagement was never real. Yet he still needs her to say the words. Later, in the Maldives epilogue, they finally verbalize everything: Nate confesses he left the military and is in therapy; Izzy admits she quit her job and trusts him completely. The plane taking off—this time with both of them together—mirrors the original crash but ends in a kiss, not disaster. The explicit verbal agreement (“stop leaving our relationship to fate”) resolves a decade of misreading.

Complexity and Contradiction

Yarros complicates the theme by showing that their wordless communication is often their most honest. Nate knows Izzy needs music during flights; Izzy knows Nate’s “I’m fine” really means he is not. The problem is that they use this deep understanding as a substitute for direct statements, assuming the other already knows. Torre’s comment to Nate—“Swear to God, nothing fucks you up more than that woman”—highlights how their emotional connection makes them both avoid clarity. Furthermore, Izzy’s hidden motive in adding northern provinces to the Afghanistan itinerary is never fully explained; she keeps professional secrets from Nate, just as he keeps combat secrets from her. Only by learning to speak the unspeakable—Nate’s PTSD nightmares, Izzy’s family pressure—do they break the cycle.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Nate keep his PTSD and therapy a secret from Izzy for so many years?
Nate believes that revealing his trauma would make him “not good enough” for Izzy and would also threaten his career in Special Forces. He compartmentalizes his combat experiences, thinking that protecting Izzy from the “shitstorm” outweighs her desire to know him fully.

2. How does Izzy’s engagement ring function as a symbol of miscommunication?
The ring appears on Izzy’s hand when Nate first sees her in Kabul, yet she later removes it. The ring represents Izzy’s decision to accept Jeremy’s proposal out of family obligation, not love. Nate misinterprets the ring as proof that she has moved on, while Izzy fails to explain the coercion behind it.

3. In what ways do letters and book exchanges enable both intimacy and evasion?
The letters allow them to share their days and build a private world, but they also provide a space to omit difficult topics—Nate redacts combat details, Izzy doesn’t tell him about her father’s pressure. The books become a proxy for the conversations they avoid having in person.

4. What is the turning point where miscommunication begins to resolve?
When Nate enters therapy and stops hiding his nightmares (chapter 32), and when Izzy quits her political job and chooses to trust him fully (chapter 33), they finally tell each other the truths they have withheld. The Maldives flight scene marks the verbal pledge to stop leaving their relationship to chance.

5. How does the initial plane crash shape the pattern of their communication?
The crash forces them into physical closeness—hand-holding, survival—without needing words. This experience teaches them that wordless connection can be powerful, but it also sets a precedent: they rely on nonverbal understanding to avoid discussing the future, the past, and their deepest fears. The crash becomes both their origin story and the source of their communication problem.