Ignite Me

In Shatter Me, Juliette regularly uses her hair as a means to hide her face, a protective measure she deploys during a portion of her narrative where she is frightened of nearly everything and everyone around her. In Unravel Me, she regularly wears her hair in an elastic band—a simple device whose loss she laments several times in Ignite Me. Pulled back from her face, her hair is less notable to Juliette, and therefore less significant in the narrative. In Ignite Me, however, Juliette begins to dwell on the ways that her hair isn’t a neutral feature but rather a negative one that she perceives as a burden. Early in the text, she comments, “My hair is too heavy; it’s begun to feel like it’s suffocating me” (26). This observation about her hair corresponds with her determination to kill Anderson and defeat The Reestablishment, an important decision in her character arc. The idea that her hair, which she once used to hide herself away from others, has begun to feel suffocating, implies that she no longer wishes or needs to hide and is stepping into her own as a both a person and a leader of the resistance.