Okay, so Erika tipped me about the TV-series "Glee" yesterday, and I thought it sounded good so I went home and watched the first episode. I'm on episode 4 now, what does that tell you? :) I love it!! So today's song is from the series. It's called "Loser like me". I really like it because I was kind of the loser in my previous school, like the kids in the Glee-club.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBYJBtxLsSI
Love,
Frida
P.S. I have Musical-lesson today, and I can't wait!!!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Twiin
Today I spent all day with my friend Erika. We had a lot of fun! I watched PS. I love you for the first time and it was really cute! We also listened to some music and made summerpresents for our friends. :) One of the songs we listened to is called "Leaving Home" and is from this year's song contest. I decided it should be today's song :) The singer's name is Nicke Borg.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6yeYFFmDg
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6yeYFFmDg
Love,
Frida
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Pictures
Hello :) Today was Mother's Day (at least here in Sweden, I don't know about everywhere else). I went to central Stockholm to get my mom her present (a bracelet) but before that I went to the library. I was there for like an hour. ;) I got several CDs, two books and the movie "Pride and Prejudice" (the one with Keira Knightly). I need to return the movie within a week so I'll have to watch it soon, YAY :)
The end of this semester is getting closer by the minute, and it actually makes me kind of sad.. In a year I will be graduating, and I'm done with yet another school. We've had so many great memories together.. Therefore I decided that today's song is "Pictures of You" by The Last Goodnight.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW7obWirYAo
Love,
Frida
The end of this semester is getting closer by the minute, and it actually makes me kind of sad.. In a year I will be graduating, and I'm done with yet another school. We've had so many great memories together.. Therefore I decided that today's song is "Pictures of You" by The Last Goodnight.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW7obWirYAo
Love,
Frida
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Perfect Princess - A Princess Diaries Book
Sorry, I forgot that it's Saturday so I should write about a book. Well this week I've read "Perfect Princess" by Meg Cabot. It's not one of the books in "The Princess Diaries" series, but it's written as if by the main characters of the series; Mia, Lilly, Tina Hakim Baba, Mia's Grandmére and Michael (God, I love Michael). It's a book where different kind of princesses are described/admired - real princesses, fake princesses, fictional princesses and should-be princesses, in the categories Perfect Princesses (by Dowager Princess Clarisse Renaldo - Mia's Grandmére), Style Princesses (by hair and makeup guru Paulo and fashinisto Sebastiano - Mia's hairdresser and gowndesigner), Mrs. Princess (by Tina Hakim Baba (Mia's close friend), Power Princesses (by Lilly Moscovitz - Mia's best friend), Action Princesses (by Michael Moscovitz - Lilly's older brother) and Politically Correct Princesses and Wannabe/Should-be princesses (by Mia).
The book was interesting to read as I barely knew any of the princesses before but a few of them were from American cartoons I've never seen so I didn't really get the jokes. I loved the connections made to the actual books by Mia and the tone that it was written in but I must say that I like the series better. I only recommend this if you've read all the books in the series and are dying to read more (but can't since the series have ended). Otherwise, it could be considered a waste of time.
Love,
Frida
Tired
Today I cleaned the kitchen and living room, for like 7 hours.. I also started and emptied two dishwashers and one washing machine.. Now I'm exhausted. So I decided today's song would be "Topsy Turvy" by Family Force 5.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scYfxddVXv0
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scYfxddVXv0
Love,
Frida
Friday, May 27, 2011
Just "DISNEY" your day!
Hello! I'm done with all my schoolwork for this year! I'm celebrating by listening to some Disney-songs (I couldn't decide what movie to watch). I'm suggesting you do the same. Use Spotify or YouTube to find your favourite songs from your favourite Disney-movies, create a playlist and PLAY IT! ;)
Love,
Frida
PS. Among my favourites are songs from "Mulan", "Tarzan" and the song "I'm still here" from the movie "The Treasure Planet".
Love,
Frida
PS. Among my favourites are songs from "Mulan", "Tarzan" and the song "I'm still here" from the movie "The Treasure Planet".
Wonderful Quotes
Here are some of my favourite quotes. I got the idea from one of my friends' blog.
“I did not fail, I only found a hundred thousand ways that did not work.”
– Albert Einstein
“Every story has an end, but in life, every ending is just another beginning.” – Uptown Girls
“Without the possibility of pain, there can be no joy, no real love.”
– Angela Montenegro
“People say you only live once, but people are as wrong about that as they are about everything. In the darkest moments before dawn a woman returns to her bed. What life is she leading? Is it the same life the woman was living half an hour ago, a day ago, a year ago? Who is this man? Do they lead separate lifes or is it a single life shared? A storm is approaching, it is still over the horizon but you can feel the crackle of electricity in the air. Are either of them aware of the gathering turbulence? Or are they aware of only the electricity the generate between themselves? The first hint of the storm is not a thunderclap, it is a knock…” – Jack Hodgins
“You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions” - Elizabeth Gilbert
“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore” – Christopher Columbus
“Don’t go downhill just because it’s easy. The view is only visible from the top.” – Destiny Booze
“You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.” – Chuck Palahniuk
"You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything.” – Gustave Flaubert
“If we are oblivious to the past, history is condemned to repeat itself.”
- Unknown
“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.” - Katharine Hepburn
“I believe when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade…and try to find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.” - Ron White
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe” - Albert Einstein
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” – William Shakespeare
“A friend is someone, who upon seeing another friend in immense pain, would rather be the one experiencing the pain than to have to watch their friend suffer.” – Amanda Grier
“Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.” – Oren Arnold
“A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.” – Fr. Jerome Cummings
“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Others stay awhile, make footprints on our hearts and we are never, ever the same." – Anonymous
“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and sings it back to you when you have forgotten how it goes.” - Anonymous
“If I were a woman, I would never trust men who say they are feminists. Either they are acting out of guilt, trying to establish credentials, or they think they might be able to pick up more girls. If I were a woman, I would say, go away and have your first period. Then come back and tell me you are a feminist.” - David Thomas
“Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep… wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you’ re just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky he is to have YOU… The one who turns to his friends and says, thats her…” - Unknown
“We were given: Two hands to hold. Two legs to walk. Two eyes to see. Two ears to listen. But why only one heart? Because the other was given to someone else. For us to find.” – Unknown
“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love. “ – Anonymous
“A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesnt believe, and leaves before she is left.” – Marilyn Monroe
“I laugh, I love, I hope, I try I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry. And I know you do the same things too, So we’re really not that different, me and you.” – Colin Raye
“No man is worth your tears, and when you find the man who is, he’ll never make you cry.” -Anonymous
“Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the whole world.” – George Bernard Shaw
“He who dies with the most toys still dies” – Sean Covey
“If who I am is what I have and what I have is lost, then who am I?” – Anonymous
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways, And no message could have been any clearer, If you wanna make the world a better place, Take a look at yoursel, and then make a change.”
- Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard (sung by Michael Jackson)
”Always be the first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” – Judy Garland
“People are just about as happy as they make up their mind to be.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” – Mark Twain
“Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man’s doing but my own. I am the force.” – Elaine Maxwell
“Before I can walk in another’s shoes, I must first remove my own.” – Unknown
“Listen, or thy tongue will make thee deaf.” – Native American Proverb
“I did not fail, I only found a hundred thousand ways that did not work.”
– Albert Einstein
“Every story has an end, but in life, every ending is just another beginning.” – Uptown Girls
“Without the possibility of pain, there can be no joy, no real love.”
– Angela Montenegro
“People say you only live once, but people are as wrong about that as they are about everything. In the darkest moments before dawn a woman returns to her bed. What life is she leading? Is it the same life the woman was living half an hour ago, a day ago, a year ago? Who is this man? Do they lead separate lifes or is it a single life shared? A storm is approaching, it is still over the horizon but you can feel the crackle of electricity in the air. Are either of them aware of the gathering turbulence? Or are they aware of only the electricity the generate between themselves? The first hint of the storm is not a thunderclap, it is a knock…” – Jack Hodgins
“You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions” - Elizabeth Gilbert
“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore” – Christopher Columbus
“Don’t go downhill just because it’s easy. The view is only visible from the top.” – Destiny Booze
“You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.” – Chuck Palahniuk
"You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything.” – Gustave Flaubert
“If we are oblivious to the past, history is condemned to repeat itself.”
- Unknown
“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.” - Katharine Hepburn
“I believe when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade…and try to find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.” - Ron White
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe” - Albert Einstein
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” – William Shakespeare
“A friend is someone, who upon seeing another friend in immense pain, would rather be the one experiencing the pain than to have to watch their friend suffer.” – Amanda Grier
“Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.” – Oren Arnold
“A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.” – Fr. Jerome Cummings
“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Others stay awhile, make footprints on our hearts and we are never, ever the same." – Anonymous
“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and sings it back to you when you have forgotten how it goes.” - Anonymous
“If I were a woman, I would never trust men who say they are feminists. Either they are acting out of guilt, trying to establish credentials, or they think they might be able to pick up more girls. If I were a woman, I would say, go away and have your first period. Then come back and tell me you are a feminist.” - David Thomas
“Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep… wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you’ re just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky he is to have YOU… The one who turns to his friends and says, thats her…” - Unknown
“We were given: Two hands to hold. Two legs to walk. Two eyes to see. Two ears to listen. But why only one heart? Because the other was given to someone else. For us to find.” – Unknown
“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love. “ – Anonymous
“A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesnt believe, and leaves before she is left.” – Marilyn Monroe
“I laugh, I love, I hope, I try I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry. And I know you do the same things too, So we’re really not that different, me and you.” – Colin Raye
“No man is worth your tears, and when you find the man who is, he’ll never make you cry.” -Anonymous
“Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the whole world.” – George Bernard Shaw
“He who dies with the most toys still dies” – Sean Covey
“If who I am is what I have and what I have is lost, then who am I?” – Anonymous
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways, And no message could have been any clearer, If you wanna make the world a better place, Take a look at yoursel, and then make a change.”
- Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard (sung by Michael Jackson)
”Always be the first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” – Judy Garland
“People are just about as happy as they make up their mind to be.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” – Mark Twain
“Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man’s doing but my own. I am the force.” – Elaine Maxwell
“Before I can walk in another’s shoes, I must first remove my own.” – Unknown
“Listen, or thy tongue will make thee deaf.” – Native American Proverb
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Amazing
Hi! I was amazed when I found a lot of songs that I've "liked" on YouTube like ages ago! Here's the link to one of them, that gets to be Today's Song, just cuz :) It's "I Still Believe" by Hayden Panettiere
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm4gJhsJcsc
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm4gJhsJcsc
Love,
Frida
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
I have the cutest brother in the entire world
We just danced to the song "Lipstick" by Jedward, and now he's dancing to "Popular" by the Swedish winner Eric Saade, and next he wants "Manboy" by the same artist. Not really my favourite (not at all actually) but since my brother is the cutest ever I'll still make both the songs the song(s) of today.
YouTube link Popular: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjB2lKSkstk
YouTube link Manboy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klEuRNG6EQ0 (live)
Love,
Frida (proudest big sister ever)
YouTube link Popular: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjB2lKSkstk
YouTube link Manboy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klEuRNG6EQ0 (live)
Love,
Frida (proudest big sister ever)
Monday, May 23, 2011
Need You Now
Today's song is "Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlJy_Cb21Lw
I'm sorry I don't write more but I've got a busload of studying.
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlJy_Cb21Lw
I'm sorry I don't write more but I've got a busload of studying.
Love,
Frida
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Whatever tomorrow brings..
I'll be there! With open arms and open eyes! Yeah...
I "discovered" the song "Drive" by Incubus while watching "Surf's Up" with my baby brother yesterday. Or rather, I was sitting by the computer and he was watching the movie.. Either way I heard the song and liked it, especially the lyrics :) So it just had to be today's song.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpwsuhOUAkk
Now I have to get back to my studying! One National Exam, two tests, a labraport, and some additional Homework needs my attention... Bluhrk!
Well, hope you guys have a lovely homework-free weekend.
Love,
Frida
I "discovered" the song "Drive" by Incubus while watching "Surf's Up" with my baby brother yesterday. Or rather, I was sitting by the computer and he was watching the movie.. Either way I heard the song and liked it, especially the lyrics :) So it just had to be today's song.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpwsuhOUAkk
Now I have to get back to my studying! One National Exam, two tests, a labraport, and some additional Homework needs my attention... Bluhrk!
Well, hope you guys have a lovely homework-free weekend.
Love,
Frida
Saturday, May 21, 2011
I Won't Say I'm In Love!
Today's song is from the Disney-movie "Hercules" (yes, I like Disney-movies, and the songs in them). It is Meg's song "I won't say I'm in love". I'm not taking Psychology yet, so I definitely do not believe my subconscious is telling me something, hehe :) No, but seriously, being in love is such a nice feeling so I wouldn't try to convince myself that I wasn't if I was - which I'm not. In lov, that is.. Ok, that got complicated. Don't read into it, it's just a nice song. :)
Ok, so here's the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh3dO3IzWtw
Love,
Frida :)
Ok, so here's the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh3dO3IzWtw
Love,
Frida :)
Forever Princess
"Forever Princess" by Meg Cabot is the last book in the "Princess Diaries"-series. I just love, love, love this book. Sadly, I believe it's necessary to read the 9 previous books to really get this one. SO, for those of you who haven't - I really recommend it!The "Princess Diaries" books are about Mia Thermopolis, a pretty normal girl - actually a geeky outcast with only a few friends when she starts Albert Einstein High School. But when her father finds that he will have no more children she is informed that she is the only heir to the throne in Genovia, a small European Country. Which means that she has to deal with Princess Lessons, and her Grandmére the Dowager Princess in addition to the normal teenage stuff people go through in High School.
I really like the series (my least favourites are books 7-9, I think). I think what I like the most is Meg Cabot's way of writing, it's just very fun and "teenage-y" :)
Love,
Frida
Friday, May 20, 2011
The End of Grey's Anatomy Season 7
Hello :) Today I saw the last episode of Season 7 of Grey's Anatomy, which means I have to wait a long time for the next episode/season! I must admit one of my favourite scenes from this season was the end of "The Song beneath the Song" (The musical episode) where pretty much everyone sings "How to save a life". However, it could be because I love that song (by The Fray). So anyway.. that's today's song.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjVQ36NhbMk
Lots of Love,
Fida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjVQ36NhbMk
Lots of Love,
Fida
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Just a normal day
Today's song is "Fireflies" by Owl City
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psuRGfAaju4
Enjoy!
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psuRGfAaju4
Enjoy!
Frida
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Dadadum!
I know some people don't like this while others love it. The song is "Lipstick" with the group Jedward from Ireland. It was Ireland's contribution to Eurovision Song Contest.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRAy6lFCfOo
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRAy6lFCfOo
Love,
Frida
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Ooops..
I've kind of been busy these last few days so today there will be three songs! Today's song is from last year's Swedish "Song Contest": "Keep on Walking" by Salem Al Fakir.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-w3A4H5Pbs
Yesterday's song is "I'm Only Me When I'm With You" by Taylor Swift
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlTfYj7q5gQ
And Sunday's song is "Slide" with Goo Goo Dolls
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5HDE4NxEU0
I would also like to recommend a blog, managed by a friend of mine: japaswede :)
Here's a link to her blog: http://japaswede.blogspot.com
It's full of pretty and/or funny pictures and quotes, one of my recent personal favorites is the one that says "Keep calm and find yourself a Mr. Darcy".. But that could be because of the fact that I loooove Mr. Darcy :)
Peace Out!
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-w3A4H5Pbs
Yesterday's song is "I'm Only Me When I'm With You" by Taylor Swift
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlTfYj7q5gQ
And Sunday's song is "Slide" with Goo Goo Dolls
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5HDE4NxEU0
I would also like to recommend a blog, managed by a friend of mine: japaswede :)
Here's a link to her blog: http://japaswede.blogspot.com
It's full of pretty and/or funny pictures and quotes, one of my recent personal favorites is the one that says "Keep calm and find yourself a Mr. Darcy".. But that could be because of the fact that I loooove Mr. Darcy :)
Peace Out!
Frida
Saturday, May 14, 2011
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
WARNING! This post could include spoilers for those of you who haven't read this book!! I really recommend for you to read it though, it's awesome!
LOVE AND NEGLECT
By: Frida
Imagine a hypothetical situation where a person has two children and one of them is diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukaemia, APL, at age two. The only way to cure her is for a donor whom is a HLA (human leukocyte antigen) match to donate blood. No one is a match. The child’s parents decide to create a baby who is. The saviour baby girl is born and has to live her life providing parts of herself to her sister for thirteen years, only having her parents notice her when her sister relapses and they need her body. Finally, that child says no. That is the complicated situation in the Fitzgerald family in My Sister’s Keeper where Anna was born to be a donor for her leukemic sister Kate. The purpose of this essay is to explore how the siblings of a fatally sick child are neglected as their parent is doing everything to save that child. Additionally it will uncover what happens to a child that is overlooked.
The reader is introduced to the Fitzgerald family when one of its members is making an important decision. Anna decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body. Subsequently, one is thrown into the story of a family where everyone has different views of the same situation, where authority and responsibility is questioned after years of following orders. Anna feels that she alone is the one responsible for her body and that her parents lack the judgement necessary as they have to consider two of their children. She hires a famous lawyer, Campbell Alexander and the case is assigned a guardian ad litem named Julia. Besides the fact that Julia and Campbell have a past together they play important roles in the novel, e.g. in conversations with Anna. She grows to trust these two people, which mean that their conversations gives the reader even further understanding about her situation.
The lawsuit leads to a trial and during the time leading up to it the reader finds out more about the family, its members and their feelings. The only one never really getting her thoughts through is Kate. It is only her perspective that is not presented. Through Anna, however, the reader finds that Kate, just like Anna, is tired of all the medical procedures. Even further on in the novel one finds that Kate actually asked Anna to stop being her donor. “‘Don’t do it,’ she repeated, and it wasn’t until I heard her a second time that I understood what she was really saying.” (pg. 390) There is a part of Anna that wishes that her sister was dead; otherwise she would not do as her sister says. She also admits to dreaming about going to college, maybe travelling abroad or just going to a hockey camp. Nonetheless, this is not possible as long as she needs to be around her sister. Additionally, she realises that if she does not act now it will never stop. This time it is not bone marrow or blood she has to donate, but her kidney, an organ that does not reproduce itself. Furthermore, it is a risky surgery, even though considered safe. The chance of dying on the operating table is 1 in 3000 and it takes approximately a month to recover. Anna understands that her chances of playing hockey, which she loves, will be gone and she fears that if this surgery does save her sister there will be yet another one soon. “‘Yes, you [Anna] are [at Campbell’s office]. I’m just trying to figure out what made you want to put your foot down, after all this time.’ She looks over at the bookshelf. ‘Because,’ she says simply, ‘it never stops.’” (pg. 22) Anna is right of course, the plan was that the first donation – made only a few minutes after her birth – would be sufficient to cure Kate. Still, she has donated something several times after that, each time convinced that it is the last time. When she hires Campbell, Anna has figured out that if she donates a kidney Kate might survive, and then she will need another organ, e.g. the liver. If Anna cannot make the decisions about her own body, her parents might go too far before realizing that both their daughters are dying.
Anna Fitzgerald knows exactly why she was born. In the introduction of the novel she explains that scientists managed to create a genetic match to her sister and that her parents only had her to save Kate. “It made me wonder though, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy. Chances are I’d still be floating up in heaven or wherever, waiting to be attached to a body to spend some time on earth.” (pg. 8) Already in the beginning of the novel Anna questions her existence and sees herself as a container of everything that Kate might need one day. “’Anna,’ I murmur. My mother turns. ‘What?’ ‘A four-letter word for vessel,’ I say, and I walk out of Kate’s room.” (pg. 251) This quote is from when Kate is in the search for a four-letter word for vessel for a crossword puzzle when the doctor comes in to inform her, Anna and Sara that she might only have one week left to live. Sara asks Anna to hinder the lawsuit, to donate her kidney. Everyone assumes that Anna will live up to the expectation they have on her as it is as simple as saving her sister. However, she is sick of living as a container of her sister’s spare parts. Sure, she loves her sister and her family but at the age of thirteen it is not odd that she wants a life of her own. It is an age of being a bit selfish yet being responsible enough to make important decisions and that is all she wants. She wants the simple power of controlling herself and her life.
In the book Anna faces an extremely difficult decision. The only way for her to be in control of herself is to stop being Kate’s donor. Another dimension to the problem is added due to the fact that Kate not only is Anna’s older sister, she is her best friend. Anna’s existence is based on her sister’s disease and the chances of Kate’s survival are based on Anna’s life. Based on this reciprocity it is actually no wonder they grew up to be best friends. A contributing factor to their friendship is the lack of other friends. “’Friends?’ She [Anna] shakes her head. ‘You can’t really have anyone over to your house when your sister needs to be resting. You don’t get invited back for sleepovers when your mom comes to pick you up at two in the morning to go to the hospital.” (pg. 111) Later it continues; “‘So who do you talk to?’ She looks at me. ‘Kate.’” (pg. 111) This quote is from when Anna talks to Julia, the guardian ad litem. Her role is to work with cases concerning underage clients. Julia’s main assignment is to assess if Anna really is responsible enough to be in charge of her own body and if she is mature enough to make life altering decisions. From this quote one derives that Anna is aware that she has no one but Kate. Still, the part of her that wants her own life – a normal life – wants Kate to die. The desire to be something else than a vessel is so prominent that she can overcome her sister’s death.
Already at her birth parts of her were more important than Anna herself. The following quote is from when Sara describes her second daughter’s birth. “‘The umbilical cord,’ I remind him. “Be careful.” He cuts it, beautiful blood, and hurries it out of the room to a place where it will be cryogenically preserved until Kate is ready for it.” (pg. 104) Sara’s obsession with Anna’s blood is almost sickening; she barely cares for the little newborn child, she only cares about how she is an asset in the plan of saving Kate. Sara somehow lost the capability to take all her children into consideration when Kate got sick. She is determined not to let her daughter die, and it clouds her judgement. It is very unlikely that the kidney transplant will save Kate, yet Sara is willing to go through with it, just for the very small chance that it might.
Sara is extremely determined to keep her oldest daughter alive. After they found out about Kate’s condition she said “I’m not going to let Kate die.” (pg. 36) That determination is what leads to the decision to make Anna. One of the clearest mistakes Sara makes in Anna’s upbringing is enhancing how important Anna is for her sister. “We loved you even more,’ my mother made sure to say, ‘because we knew exactly what we were getting.” (pg. 8) What they were getting was someone who could save Kate. Since Anna knows what her mother means, it is implied that Sara only loves Anna for that very reason. One comes to the conclusion that Sara’s constant reminders make Anna feel that they would not love her if she could not save Kate. So, to be loved, she donates parts of herself to her sister, continues to be the one to save her sister. Jesse says: “And you [Anna], you’re the Peacekeeper.” (pg. 15) He is under the impression that she does anything to keep her family happy but the fact is that she does anything to be loved.
Brian’s actual realization of how Anna is treated moves the reader, yet creates a feeling of irritation as he does not do enough to prevent it. He does offer Anna to move in with him at the fire station during the week leading up to the trial, but in the whole picture he too focuses more on Kate. One instance where it is notable to the reader that Brian, unlike Sara, actually pays attention to all his children is during the dinner the same day Anna hired Campbell. “This is when I realize that Anna has already left the table, and more importantly, that nobody noticed.” (pg. 40) Sara is overly focused on Kate to even notice that Anna acts differently whereas Brian notices right away that Anna is acting oddly even before they find out about the lawsuit. After dinner Sara wants to discuss how Kate looked: “Better than Anna did, I [Brian] thought, but this was not what she was asking.” (pg. 44)
Anna has a necklace that she has worn for seven years. It is a gift from her father; he gave it to her after a bone marrow harvest, “because he said anyone who was giving her sister such a major present deserved one of her own.” (pg. 9) The thought to give Anna something does not even occur to Sara. The six year old Anna is of course very pleased with her gift but the reader cannot help to think that she might be better off without it. Anna might start associating medical procedures with gifts and expect to get something every time she helps Kate. Sara’s and Brian’s way of treating Anna are therefore similar; they both say that they give her something in exchange for her body parts. Anna might only donate parts of herself because she is under the impression that it is the only way to get something valuable and materialistic from her father or the only way to get her mother’s love.
Only being alive to keep her sister alive creates feelings of invisibility in Anna. She realises that she is forgotten at times “There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to ten years old in one fell swoop.” (pg. 130) When the parents do not have the time for their children it shows and one could argue that the number of photos of the child is evidence of that. Her mother is so focused on Kate and her disease that she barely considers Anna. Brian does not really know what to do or say and finds it extremely difficult to find the right thing to do. They both try to do their best, but parents are often only asked to looking out for one child’s best interest. “But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down.” (pg. 112) Sara and Brian are blinded, and so Anna becomes invisible. She tries to become visible again by suing her parents. That is her way of fighting against years of neglect.
Anna is not the only one who is forgotten in the Fitzgerald family, Jesse also suffers from feeling invisible. Jesse is Kate’s and Anna’s older brother. He is two years Kate’s senior, which means that he had a perfectly normal life for four years – until his sister got diagnosed with APL. After Kate’s diagnose there has been no room for Jesse. Before Anna was born Sara and Brian only had two children to look after, but they still managed to forget their son. “’Who else is going to watch Jesse?’ Brian and I [Sara] look at each other; we haven’t thought that far.” (pg. 71) His parents are the ones who should remember him, who should always think of him. Yet, the only one who actually does think of him is Suzanne, Sara’s older sister.
It is understandable that they forgot him once, in the beginning when everything was new and scary. Yet, in the following fourteen years Jesse had to live with the fact that one of his siblings – most often Kate – was more important. Nonetheless, what the reader finds more upsetting is how he realises and handles it. One is told about a few instances where he is neglected from Sara’s flashbacks and others from Jesse himself. At age ten, Jesse needs to go to the orthodontist, after which he is promised to buy a pair of cleats. Because of Kate, Sara decides that they cannot go and tells her very disappointed son to grow up. “Jesse looks out the window, where Kate straddles the arm of an oak tree, coaching Anna in how to climb up. ‘Yeah, right, she’s sick,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you grow up? Why don’t you figure out that the world doesn’t revolve around her?’” (pgs. 166) One could argue that this quote shows that Jesse knows that his mother’s life only revolves around his sister, that she barely has the time for anyone else. This realization leads to Jesse lashing out and acting drastically, anything to get some of his mother’s attention. “Blood covers Jesse’s mouth, a vampire’s lipstick; bits of wire stick out like a seamstress’s pins. I notice the fork he is holding, and realize this is what he has used to pull off his braces.” (pg. 167) Pulling out his own braces with a fork could be seen as an act towards becoming the person he is when the reader is introduced to him – a very problematic young man. One could argue that he acted the way he did to get his mother’s attention. Also, it could only be that he, like Anna, is sick of being a child, controlled by his parents and it is an act of blind desire to independence.
Jesse was always an afterthought, and never the first one to be taken into consideration. Kate’s procedures meant that Anna ended up in the hospital as well and if you are in the hospital your parents will notice you, sooner or later. Jesse did not end up in there with his sisters so he was forgotten until a few weeks later. When he was eleven he got a skateboard for what – on the surface – seemed like no reason at all. “I never asked for one; it was a guilt gift.” (pg. 244) It is difficult to determine if it is positive or negative that Jesse got these “gifts of guilt” from his parents. He knows that he was forgotten and therefore it adds to his feelings of being neglected. Admittedly, it is probably better that he got the gifts in the end as he would have realised at an older age that his parents ignored that he was overlooked. That might have led to something worse than what Jesse turned out to be.
In a conversation with Julia Jesse brings up another memory of being neglected. When he was twelve Kate got an infection and had to spend Christmas Eve at the hospital, together with Anna who had to donate granulocytes, more commonly known white blood cells. Jesse was left with the neighbours. When he got bored he snuck out, chopped down a tree and made Christmas in the living room before returning back to them. The next morning his parents collected him from neighbours and he came home to find presents to him under the tree. “… I [Jesse] happened to know that it [the present] was on sale in the hospital gift shop. As was every single other present I got that year. Go freaking figure.” (pg. 192) Furthermore, his parents did not even mention the tree. Following this recollection Jesse states that it feels as if you are constantly forgotten and overlooked growing up in the Fitzgerald family, at least for him. “Do you think it’s the same for Anna?’ ‘No. Anna’s on the radar, because she plays into their grand plan for Kate.” (pg. 192) As Jesse puts it; Anna’s on the radar. She is, at least, noted by their parents. Maybe not for the best of reasons but she is still there, something Jesse envies. All the children in this family envies each other in one way or another “No matter who you are, there is some part of you that always wishes you were someone else” (pg. 138) Kate does not want to be sick, Anna does not want to be a vessel for Kate’s body parts and Jesse just wants to be noted, accepted. All the neglect that Jesse suffers, and all the times that he is forgotten due to his sisters adds up to him becoming self-destructive.
Another time that Jesse makes a big lash out is when he blows up a school toilet using sodium from the school’s lab and gets suspended for three weeks. Despite all this, Sara, who is the one to pick him up, somehow gets on the subject of Kate - again. “He [Jesse] glares at me [Sara]. ‘You could take a conversation about the frigging Red Sox and somehow turn it back to Kate.” (pg. 266) This shows that no matter what Jesse does, his sister and her disease still get the attention. Blowing up the school toilet should be looked at as an act of desperation; he is in desperate need of his mother’s attention but she is incapable of seeing the signs. Even when he screams it out loud she does not understand. “You don’t know what it’s like being the kid whose sister is dying of cancer.’ ‘I have a fairly good idea. Since I’m the mother of the kid who is dying of cancer.“ (pg. 267) She does not comprehend the point that he is trying to make. There is a huge difference between being the mother of a dying child and being the child’s brother. Anna gets some satisfaction from saving the sister she loves so much but Jesse cannot do anything else than look from the sideline. Not only is Jesse neglected but he has to live with the feelings of being completely useless.
All these instances made him into the young man the reader is introduced to in the beginning of the book. He is a very angry eighteen-year-old living above the family garage, only showing up for dinner. One would call Jesse extremely troubled; he smokes, drinks, uses drugs and he is an arsonist. He spends most of his time starting fires in abandoned buildings. Even though he feels useless and does so many bad things, one would say that his heart is in the right place. He might forget it at times but he is a good guy. Jesse has the desire to help people – especially his family. At the age of fourteen Sara finds marks of needles on his arms and assumes that he is using drugs. “Yeah, Ma. I shoot up every three days. Except I’m not doing smack, I’m getting blood taken out of me on the third floor here.’ He stares at me. ‘Didn’t you wonder who else was keeping Kate in platelets?” (pg. 267) This quote shows that he really wants to help his sister and does whatever he can to do so. When Kate needs a kidney he offers to donate one, but is told that the donor has to be a better match. “But inside I’m [Jesse] burning just as hot as I was when that fire caught at the warehouse. What made me believe I might be worth something, even now?” (pg. 98) He feels very ashamed and angry at himself for being worthless. The reader comes to the conclusion that the repressed rage is the reason behind the arsonist in Jesse.
Another instance where Jesse shows his unconditional love for his sisters is when he acts drunk to get Anna into Kate’s room in the hospital. Anna really wants to talk to her sister so she turns to Jesse for help and, knowing he will be punished, he enters the oncology wing, pretending to be severely intoxicated. This really shows his desire to help people, especially his sisters. He is always there for them though no one is ever there for him.
It is not mentioned that Jesse is punished for the scene he created at the hospital, which implies that Sara does not really care enough to punish him. No one really cares enough to react to his toxic behaviour. Imagine being able to show up for dinner visibly affected by drugs without making a scene – that is Jesse’s everyday life, and that is how little time his parents have to care about him. “Don’t get me wrong – it isn’t that my parents don’t care about Jesse or whatever trouble he’s gotten himself mixed up in. It’s just that they don’t really have time to care about it, because it’s a problem somewhere lower on the totem pole.” (pg. 14) A child should not be lower than anything on the totem pole. Sara does not even know when or why she stopped caring about his actions. “I wonder when, exactly, I gave up on him. I wonder why, when Jesse’s history is not by any stretch as disappointing as his sister’s.” (pg. 266) In the actual neglecting of Jesse, Sara and Brian are not too different. They both see most of the things that are going on and they both decide not to do anything about it. One might argue that there is nothing you can do to help a troubled child. However, if Jesse got the love and attention that every child deserves he would probably behave completely different.
Sara spends all her time fighting for Kate, fighting for a child that might not make it. One cannot say that she should not do that because she should. She should be fighting for her daughter’s life but she should also fight for Anna’s and Jesse’s lives. Her obsession with Kate leads to the neglect of her other two children. They tried to make it work and to have their children lead a normal life “but that’s a relative term. The truth is, I [Anna] was never really a kid. To be honest, neither were Kate and Jesse. I guess maybe my brother had his moment in the sun for the four years he was alive before Kate got diagnosed, but ever since then, we’ve been too busy looking over our shoulders to run headlong into growing up.” (pg. 9) It is, of course, extremely difficult not to forget the other children when one is lying at her deathbed but Kate is not always sick; she actually have years when she is healthy. The thing is, Sara always focuses on Kate and the others wind up in the shadows. In that aspect, Brian is a better parent. It is clearly implied throughout the novel that he tries to be there for all of his children when Kate is healthy. Sara and Brian are not evil in any way; they just do not know how to prioritize and therefore they end up neglecting their children. It is not done on purpose, but forgetting one’s children is unforgivable.
Though Jesse and Anna are neglected in similar ways it takes much longer for Anna to react. This is because she is appreciated and noted by her parents from time to time. Jesse is almost always forgotten and therefore starts to act out much earlier. It could also be caused by the fact that Anna was born into the situation, she never knew any other life than the one where she is her sister’s keeper. Jesse, however, was not. As Anna stated in the quote mentioned earlier “... my brother had his moment in the sun for the four years he was alive before Kate got diagnosed,” (pg. 9) meaning he knows a better life – a life where he got as much attention as his sister and a life where he did not feel useless. With memories of times when he was not neglected the reader understands why Jesse acts the way he does. This is slightly different when it comes to Anna. One is, of course, upset about the neglect she suffers, and wishes that something was done differently. Yet, it is not until Kate’s view on the lawsuit is brought into the open one that one truly understands her actions and sympathizes with Anna.
It could be debated whether Anna’s and Jesse’s ways of reacting are different or similar. They both act drastically, but Anna is very hesitant towards her actions whereas Jesse does not appear to have a bad conscience about what he has done. This could of course be related to how long he has been acting the way he does. Anna has lived thirteen years pleasing others and now that everything changes it is not odd that she hesitates. Jesse has been living on “the dark side” for a long time, and it is possible that he simply stopped caring after a while. It is at least safe to say that nothing good comes from being neglected. Anna might be happy on the surface but her anger and sadness are revealed as the story unravels. Jesse, on the other hand, has been neglected for so long that the happy surface has faded away, and the rage is all that one can see. What Sara and Brian do is basically fantastic, but what one forgets, or may not consider, is the backside of fighting so hard for one child. They do their best and they do an honorary job, but Anna and Jesse are forgotten and that is the biggest mistake any parent can make.
LOVE AND NEGLECT
By: Frida
Imagine a hypothetical situation where a person has two children and one of them is diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukaemia, APL, at age two. The only way to cure her is for a donor whom is a HLA (human leukocyte antigen) match to donate blood. No one is a match. The child’s parents decide to create a baby who is. The saviour baby girl is born and has to live her life providing parts of herself to her sister for thirteen years, only having her parents notice her when her sister relapses and they need her body. Finally, that child says no. That is the complicated situation in the Fitzgerald family in My Sister’s Keeper where Anna was born to be a donor for her leukemic sister Kate. The purpose of this essay is to explore how the siblings of a fatally sick child are neglected as their parent is doing everything to save that child. Additionally it will uncover what happens to a child that is overlooked. The reader is introduced to the Fitzgerald family when one of its members is making an important decision. Anna decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body. Subsequently, one is thrown into the story of a family where everyone has different views of the same situation, where authority and responsibility is questioned after years of following orders. Anna feels that she alone is the one responsible for her body and that her parents lack the judgement necessary as they have to consider two of their children. She hires a famous lawyer, Campbell Alexander and the case is assigned a guardian ad litem named Julia. Besides the fact that Julia and Campbell have a past together they play important roles in the novel, e.g. in conversations with Anna. She grows to trust these two people, which mean that their conversations gives the reader even further understanding about her situation.
The lawsuit leads to a trial and during the time leading up to it the reader finds out more about the family, its members and their feelings. The only one never really getting her thoughts through is Kate. It is only her perspective that is not presented. Through Anna, however, the reader finds that Kate, just like Anna, is tired of all the medical procedures. Even further on in the novel one finds that Kate actually asked Anna to stop being her donor. “‘Don’t do it,’ she repeated, and it wasn’t until I heard her a second time that I understood what she was really saying.” (pg. 390) There is a part of Anna that wishes that her sister was dead; otherwise she would not do as her sister says. She also admits to dreaming about going to college, maybe travelling abroad or just going to a hockey camp. Nonetheless, this is not possible as long as she needs to be around her sister. Additionally, she realises that if she does not act now it will never stop. This time it is not bone marrow or blood she has to donate, but her kidney, an organ that does not reproduce itself. Furthermore, it is a risky surgery, even though considered safe. The chance of dying on the operating table is 1 in 3000 and it takes approximately a month to recover. Anna understands that her chances of playing hockey, which she loves, will be gone and she fears that if this surgery does save her sister there will be yet another one soon. “‘Yes, you [Anna] are [at Campbell’s office]. I’m just trying to figure out what made you want to put your foot down, after all this time.’ She looks over at the bookshelf. ‘Because,’ she says simply, ‘it never stops.’” (pg. 22) Anna is right of course, the plan was that the first donation – made only a few minutes after her birth – would be sufficient to cure Kate. Still, she has donated something several times after that, each time convinced that it is the last time. When she hires Campbell, Anna has figured out that if she donates a kidney Kate might survive, and then she will need another organ, e.g. the liver. If Anna cannot make the decisions about her own body, her parents might go too far before realizing that both their daughters are dying.
Anna Fitzgerald knows exactly why she was born. In the introduction of the novel she explains that scientists managed to create a genetic match to her sister and that her parents only had her to save Kate. “It made me wonder though, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy. Chances are I’d still be floating up in heaven or wherever, waiting to be attached to a body to spend some time on earth.” (pg. 8) Already in the beginning of the novel Anna questions her existence and sees herself as a container of everything that Kate might need one day. “’Anna,’ I murmur. My mother turns. ‘What?’ ‘A four-letter word for vessel,’ I say, and I walk out of Kate’s room.” (pg. 251) This quote is from when Kate is in the search for a four-letter word for vessel for a crossword puzzle when the doctor comes in to inform her, Anna and Sara that she might only have one week left to live. Sara asks Anna to hinder the lawsuit, to donate her kidney. Everyone assumes that Anna will live up to the expectation they have on her as it is as simple as saving her sister. However, she is sick of living as a container of her sister’s spare parts. Sure, she loves her sister and her family but at the age of thirteen it is not odd that she wants a life of her own. It is an age of being a bit selfish yet being responsible enough to make important decisions and that is all she wants. She wants the simple power of controlling herself and her life.
In the book Anna faces an extremely difficult decision. The only way for her to be in control of herself is to stop being Kate’s donor. Another dimension to the problem is added due to the fact that Kate not only is Anna’s older sister, she is her best friend. Anna’s existence is based on her sister’s disease and the chances of Kate’s survival are based on Anna’s life. Based on this reciprocity it is actually no wonder they grew up to be best friends. A contributing factor to their friendship is the lack of other friends. “’Friends?’ She [Anna] shakes her head. ‘You can’t really have anyone over to your house when your sister needs to be resting. You don’t get invited back for sleepovers when your mom comes to pick you up at two in the morning to go to the hospital.” (pg. 111) Later it continues; “‘So who do you talk to?’ She looks at me. ‘Kate.’” (pg. 111) This quote is from when Anna talks to Julia, the guardian ad litem. Her role is to work with cases concerning underage clients. Julia’s main assignment is to assess if Anna really is responsible enough to be in charge of her own body and if she is mature enough to make life altering decisions. From this quote one derives that Anna is aware that she has no one but Kate. Still, the part of her that wants her own life – a normal life – wants Kate to die. The desire to be something else than a vessel is so prominent that she can overcome her sister’s death.
Already at her birth parts of her were more important than Anna herself. The following quote is from when Sara describes her second daughter’s birth. “‘The umbilical cord,’ I remind him. “Be careful.” He cuts it, beautiful blood, and hurries it out of the room to a place where it will be cryogenically preserved until Kate is ready for it.” (pg. 104) Sara’s obsession with Anna’s blood is almost sickening; she barely cares for the little newborn child, she only cares about how she is an asset in the plan of saving Kate. Sara somehow lost the capability to take all her children into consideration when Kate got sick. She is determined not to let her daughter die, and it clouds her judgement. It is very unlikely that the kidney transplant will save Kate, yet Sara is willing to go through with it, just for the very small chance that it might.
Sara is extremely determined to keep her oldest daughter alive. After they found out about Kate’s condition she said “I’m not going to let Kate die.” (pg. 36) That determination is what leads to the decision to make Anna. One of the clearest mistakes Sara makes in Anna’s upbringing is enhancing how important Anna is for her sister. “We loved you even more,’ my mother made sure to say, ‘because we knew exactly what we were getting.” (pg. 8) What they were getting was someone who could save Kate. Since Anna knows what her mother means, it is implied that Sara only loves Anna for that very reason. One comes to the conclusion that Sara’s constant reminders make Anna feel that they would not love her if she could not save Kate. So, to be loved, she donates parts of herself to her sister, continues to be the one to save her sister. Jesse says: “And you [Anna], you’re the Peacekeeper.” (pg. 15) He is under the impression that she does anything to keep her family happy but the fact is that she does anything to be loved.
Brian’s actual realization of how Anna is treated moves the reader, yet creates a feeling of irritation as he does not do enough to prevent it. He does offer Anna to move in with him at the fire station during the week leading up to the trial, but in the whole picture he too focuses more on Kate. One instance where it is notable to the reader that Brian, unlike Sara, actually pays attention to all his children is during the dinner the same day Anna hired Campbell. “This is when I realize that Anna has already left the table, and more importantly, that nobody noticed.” (pg. 40) Sara is overly focused on Kate to even notice that Anna acts differently whereas Brian notices right away that Anna is acting oddly even before they find out about the lawsuit. After dinner Sara wants to discuss how Kate looked: “Better than Anna did, I [Brian] thought, but this was not what she was asking.” (pg. 44)
Anna has a necklace that she has worn for seven years. It is a gift from her father; he gave it to her after a bone marrow harvest, “because he said anyone who was giving her sister such a major present deserved one of her own.” (pg. 9) The thought to give Anna something does not even occur to Sara. The six year old Anna is of course very pleased with her gift but the reader cannot help to think that she might be better off without it. Anna might start associating medical procedures with gifts and expect to get something every time she helps Kate. Sara’s and Brian’s way of treating Anna are therefore similar; they both say that they give her something in exchange for her body parts. Anna might only donate parts of herself because she is under the impression that it is the only way to get something valuable and materialistic from her father or the only way to get her mother’s love.
Only being alive to keep her sister alive creates feelings of invisibility in Anna. She realises that she is forgotten at times “There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to ten years old in one fell swoop.” (pg. 130) When the parents do not have the time for their children it shows and one could argue that the number of photos of the child is evidence of that. Her mother is so focused on Kate and her disease that she barely considers Anna. Brian does not really know what to do or say and finds it extremely difficult to find the right thing to do. They both try to do their best, but parents are often only asked to looking out for one child’s best interest. “But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down.” (pg. 112) Sara and Brian are blinded, and so Anna becomes invisible. She tries to become visible again by suing her parents. That is her way of fighting against years of neglect.
Anna is not the only one who is forgotten in the Fitzgerald family, Jesse also suffers from feeling invisible. Jesse is Kate’s and Anna’s older brother. He is two years Kate’s senior, which means that he had a perfectly normal life for four years – until his sister got diagnosed with APL. After Kate’s diagnose there has been no room for Jesse. Before Anna was born Sara and Brian only had two children to look after, but they still managed to forget their son. “’Who else is going to watch Jesse?’ Brian and I [Sara] look at each other; we haven’t thought that far.” (pg. 71) His parents are the ones who should remember him, who should always think of him. Yet, the only one who actually does think of him is Suzanne, Sara’s older sister.
It is understandable that they forgot him once, in the beginning when everything was new and scary. Yet, in the following fourteen years Jesse had to live with the fact that one of his siblings – most often Kate – was more important. Nonetheless, what the reader finds more upsetting is how he realises and handles it. One is told about a few instances where he is neglected from Sara’s flashbacks and others from Jesse himself. At age ten, Jesse needs to go to the orthodontist, after which he is promised to buy a pair of cleats. Because of Kate, Sara decides that they cannot go and tells her very disappointed son to grow up. “Jesse looks out the window, where Kate straddles the arm of an oak tree, coaching Anna in how to climb up. ‘Yeah, right, she’s sick,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you grow up? Why don’t you figure out that the world doesn’t revolve around her?’” (pgs. 166) One could argue that this quote shows that Jesse knows that his mother’s life only revolves around his sister, that she barely has the time for anyone else. This realization leads to Jesse lashing out and acting drastically, anything to get some of his mother’s attention. “Blood covers Jesse’s mouth, a vampire’s lipstick; bits of wire stick out like a seamstress’s pins. I notice the fork he is holding, and realize this is what he has used to pull off his braces.” (pg. 167) Pulling out his own braces with a fork could be seen as an act towards becoming the person he is when the reader is introduced to him – a very problematic young man. One could argue that he acted the way he did to get his mother’s attention. Also, it could only be that he, like Anna, is sick of being a child, controlled by his parents and it is an act of blind desire to independence.
Jesse was always an afterthought, and never the first one to be taken into consideration. Kate’s procedures meant that Anna ended up in the hospital as well and if you are in the hospital your parents will notice you, sooner or later. Jesse did not end up in there with his sisters so he was forgotten until a few weeks later. When he was eleven he got a skateboard for what – on the surface – seemed like no reason at all. “I never asked for one; it was a guilt gift.” (pg. 244) It is difficult to determine if it is positive or negative that Jesse got these “gifts of guilt” from his parents. He knows that he was forgotten and therefore it adds to his feelings of being neglected. Admittedly, it is probably better that he got the gifts in the end as he would have realised at an older age that his parents ignored that he was overlooked. That might have led to something worse than what Jesse turned out to be.
In a conversation with Julia Jesse brings up another memory of being neglected. When he was twelve Kate got an infection and had to spend Christmas Eve at the hospital, together with Anna who had to donate granulocytes, more commonly known white blood cells. Jesse was left with the neighbours. When he got bored he snuck out, chopped down a tree and made Christmas in the living room before returning back to them. The next morning his parents collected him from neighbours and he came home to find presents to him under the tree. “… I [Jesse] happened to know that it [the present] was on sale in the hospital gift shop. As was every single other present I got that year. Go freaking figure.” (pg. 192) Furthermore, his parents did not even mention the tree. Following this recollection Jesse states that it feels as if you are constantly forgotten and overlooked growing up in the Fitzgerald family, at least for him. “Do you think it’s the same for Anna?’ ‘No. Anna’s on the radar, because she plays into their grand plan for Kate.” (pg. 192) As Jesse puts it; Anna’s on the radar. She is, at least, noted by their parents. Maybe not for the best of reasons but she is still there, something Jesse envies. All the children in this family envies each other in one way or another “No matter who you are, there is some part of you that always wishes you were someone else” (pg. 138) Kate does not want to be sick, Anna does not want to be a vessel for Kate’s body parts and Jesse just wants to be noted, accepted. All the neglect that Jesse suffers, and all the times that he is forgotten due to his sisters adds up to him becoming self-destructive.
Another time that Jesse makes a big lash out is when he blows up a school toilet using sodium from the school’s lab and gets suspended for three weeks. Despite all this, Sara, who is the one to pick him up, somehow gets on the subject of Kate - again. “He [Jesse] glares at me [Sara]. ‘You could take a conversation about the frigging Red Sox and somehow turn it back to Kate.” (pg. 266) This shows that no matter what Jesse does, his sister and her disease still get the attention. Blowing up the school toilet should be looked at as an act of desperation; he is in desperate need of his mother’s attention but she is incapable of seeing the signs. Even when he screams it out loud she does not understand. “You don’t know what it’s like being the kid whose sister is dying of cancer.’ ‘I have a fairly good idea. Since I’m the mother of the kid who is dying of cancer.“ (pg. 267) She does not comprehend the point that he is trying to make. There is a huge difference between being the mother of a dying child and being the child’s brother. Anna gets some satisfaction from saving the sister she loves so much but Jesse cannot do anything else than look from the sideline. Not only is Jesse neglected but he has to live with the feelings of being completely useless.
All these instances made him into the young man the reader is introduced to in the beginning of the book. He is a very angry eighteen-year-old living above the family garage, only showing up for dinner. One would call Jesse extremely troubled; he smokes, drinks, uses drugs and he is an arsonist. He spends most of his time starting fires in abandoned buildings. Even though he feels useless and does so many bad things, one would say that his heart is in the right place. He might forget it at times but he is a good guy. Jesse has the desire to help people – especially his family. At the age of fourteen Sara finds marks of needles on his arms and assumes that he is using drugs. “Yeah, Ma. I shoot up every three days. Except I’m not doing smack, I’m getting blood taken out of me on the third floor here.’ He stares at me. ‘Didn’t you wonder who else was keeping Kate in platelets?” (pg. 267) This quote shows that he really wants to help his sister and does whatever he can to do so. When Kate needs a kidney he offers to donate one, but is told that the donor has to be a better match. “But inside I’m [Jesse] burning just as hot as I was when that fire caught at the warehouse. What made me believe I might be worth something, even now?” (pg. 98) He feels very ashamed and angry at himself for being worthless. The reader comes to the conclusion that the repressed rage is the reason behind the arsonist in Jesse.
Another instance where Jesse shows his unconditional love for his sisters is when he acts drunk to get Anna into Kate’s room in the hospital. Anna really wants to talk to her sister so she turns to Jesse for help and, knowing he will be punished, he enters the oncology wing, pretending to be severely intoxicated. This really shows his desire to help people, especially his sisters. He is always there for them though no one is ever there for him.
It is not mentioned that Jesse is punished for the scene he created at the hospital, which implies that Sara does not really care enough to punish him. No one really cares enough to react to his toxic behaviour. Imagine being able to show up for dinner visibly affected by drugs without making a scene – that is Jesse’s everyday life, and that is how little time his parents have to care about him. “Don’t get me wrong – it isn’t that my parents don’t care about Jesse or whatever trouble he’s gotten himself mixed up in. It’s just that they don’t really have time to care about it, because it’s a problem somewhere lower on the totem pole.” (pg. 14) A child should not be lower than anything on the totem pole. Sara does not even know when or why she stopped caring about his actions. “I wonder when, exactly, I gave up on him. I wonder why, when Jesse’s history is not by any stretch as disappointing as his sister’s.” (pg. 266) In the actual neglecting of Jesse, Sara and Brian are not too different. They both see most of the things that are going on and they both decide not to do anything about it. One might argue that there is nothing you can do to help a troubled child. However, if Jesse got the love and attention that every child deserves he would probably behave completely different.
Sara spends all her time fighting for Kate, fighting for a child that might not make it. One cannot say that she should not do that because she should. She should be fighting for her daughter’s life but she should also fight for Anna’s and Jesse’s lives. Her obsession with Kate leads to the neglect of her other two children. They tried to make it work and to have their children lead a normal life “but that’s a relative term. The truth is, I [Anna] was never really a kid. To be honest, neither were Kate and Jesse. I guess maybe my brother had his moment in the sun for the four years he was alive before Kate got diagnosed, but ever since then, we’ve been too busy looking over our shoulders to run headlong into growing up.” (pg. 9) It is, of course, extremely difficult not to forget the other children when one is lying at her deathbed but Kate is not always sick; she actually have years when she is healthy. The thing is, Sara always focuses on Kate and the others wind up in the shadows. In that aspect, Brian is a better parent. It is clearly implied throughout the novel that he tries to be there for all of his children when Kate is healthy. Sara and Brian are not evil in any way; they just do not know how to prioritize and therefore they end up neglecting their children. It is not done on purpose, but forgetting one’s children is unforgivable.
Though Jesse and Anna are neglected in similar ways it takes much longer for Anna to react. This is because she is appreciated and noted by her parents from time to time. Jesse is almost always forgotten and therefore starts to act out much earlier. It could also be caused by the fact that Anna was born into the situation, she never knew any other life than the one where she is her sister’s keeper. Jesse, however, was not. As Anna stated in the quote mentioned earlier “... my brother had his moment in the sun for the four years he was alive before Kate got diagnosed,” (pg. 9) meaning he knows a better life – a life where he got as much attention as his sister and a life where he did not feel useless. With memories of times when he was not neglected the reader understands why Jesse acts the way he does. This is slightly different when it comes to Anna. One is, of course, upset about the neglect she suffers, and wishes that something was done differently. Yet, it is not until Kate’s view on the lawsuit is brought into the open one that one truly understands her actions and sympathizes with Anna.
It could be debated whether Anna’s and Jesse’s ways of reacting are different or similar. They both act drastically, but Anna is very hesitant towards her actions whereas Jesse does not appear to have a bad conscience about what he has done. This could of course be related to how long he has been acting the way he does. Anna has lived thirteen years pleasing others and now that everything changes it is not odd that she hesitates. Jesse has been living on “the dark side” for a long time, and it is possible that he simply stopped caring after a while. It is at least safe to say that nothing good comes from being neglected. Anna might be happy on the surface but her anger and sadness are revealed as the story unravels. Jesse, on the other hand, has been neglected for so long that the happy surface has faded away, and the rage is all that one can see. What Sara and Brian do is basically fantastic, but what one forgets, or may not consider, is the backside of fighting so hard for one child. They do their best and they do an honorary job, but Anna and Jesse are forgotten and that is the biggest mistake any parent can make.
Spend all day in a cellar...
It's not as dramatic as it might sound :) I spend the day with my "musical-friends" recording 3 songs from Hair; "Aquarius", "Hare Krishna", and "Hair". I've posted links to these songs earlier so look through my older posts if you want to listen to them :) After we were done recording I met Jack and Erika (two friends from school) and got tickets to "Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides". And then Erika and I went to look at shoes and I bought a pair! ;) If you knew me, you would find it hilarious.. Because this new pair means I have 43 pairs of shoes (43 PAIRS, that means 86 individual shoes). So, I'm crazy ;)
Today's song is "Talk of The Town" by Jack Johnson, you might recognize it if you've seen "Curious George" :)
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTANCRLN6Vg
Yesterday's song is "Picture to Burn" by Taylor Swift, and the YouTUbe link below is to the official, and funny video ;)
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCMqcFAigRg
"If you come around saying sorry to me, my daddy'll show you just how sorry you'll be", I just love that line!!
Love,
Frida
Today's song is "Talk of The Town" by Jack Johnson, you might recognize it if you've seen "Curious George" :)
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTANCRLN6Vg
Yesterday's song is "Picture to Burn" by Taylor Swift, and the YouTUbe link below is to the official, and funny video ;)
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCMqcFAigRg
"If you come around saying sorry to me, my daddy'll show you just how sorry you'll be", I just love that line!!
Love,
Frida
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Im doing this for me, ok?!
I've found my motivation again! I'm doing what I do so that I'll feel good, fit and healthy, not so that some random guy will like me.. And it feels great!
The Song of the day: "I'm Still Here" from the Disney movie "Treasure Planet"
YouTube link for English version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMGXq9_IQBQ
YouTube link for Swedish version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b9cbz1mkBk
Song of yesterday: "I'll make a man out of you" from the Disney movie "Mulan"
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqta4jyAs4k
"You're dreams were never about me or my life..." But mine are, and it's time I start living. I hope you do the same!
Love,
Frida
The Song of the day: "I'm Still Here" from the Disney movie "Treasure Planet"
YouTube link for English version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMGXq9_IQBQ
YouTube link for Swedish version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b9cbz1mkBk
Song of yesterday: "I'll make a man out of you" from the Disney movie "Mulan"
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqta4jyAs4k
"You're dreams were never about me or my life..." But mine are, and it's time I start living. I hope you do the same!
Love,
Frida
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Gave my secrets away, and for that I am an awful person
I do feel like an awful person but at the same time I'm happy it's over... The song of the day is "Numb" by Linkin Park.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXYiU_JCYtU
I really hope that you're not as awful as me.
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXYiU_JCYtU
I really hope that you're not as awful as me.
Love,
Frida
Monday, May 9, 2011
Songs of the days
Not feeling very good today.. Need to study..
Today's song: "Mad World" (Kiwi Version)
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0G9vDKcdLg
Yesterday's song: "Secrets" by OneRepublic
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHsx3tFZDOk
I'll soon be giving my secrets away....
Peace!
Frida
Today's song: "Mad World" (Kiwi Version)
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0G9vDKcdLg
Yesterday's song: "Secrets" by OneRepublic
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHsx3tFZDOk
I'll soon be giving my secrets away....
Peace!
Frida
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Emotions
Today has been a pretty emotional day for me. Most of the time I've been bubbly and happy but I've also been really mad at my parents, sad for the time restriction they put on my cellphone-usage and really freaking scared and nervous about what's going to happen. So I didn't really know what song to pick today... But to keep it happy and bubbly I chose "Just the Way You Are" with Bruno Mars.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhCEhWiKXk
Enjoy!
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhCEhWiKXk
Enjoy!
Frida
Three of Harlan Coben’s outstanding Novels – with focus on their themes and issues
WARNING!!! This post could include spoilers!
This is an Essay I wrote in school last term:
Three of Harlan Coben’s outstanding Novels – with focus on their themes and issues
Harlan Coben is a number one bestseller; he has written twenty novels since 1990. This essay concerns three of his standalone novels: Play Dead written in 1990, Hold Tight written in 2008 and Caught written in 2010 – his most recent published work. (wikipedia.org, 1/12 2010) The Daily Mail writes “One of the most consistently brilliant thriller writers, Coben delivers again”. His books are exhilarating thrillers, which are impossible to put away due to the intriguing plots. They awake thoughts and emotions concerning people of all ages, ethnicities and genders. After reading said novels it is interesting to analyse and compare the themes and issues. A short mentioning of the plot and narrative will, of course, be made.
Play Dead was Coben’s first novel, though it was published 2010, and in the introduction he himself wrote “…please know that I haven’t read Play Dead in at least twenty years. I didn’t want to rewrite it and pass it off as a new book. I hate when authors do that. So this is, for better or for worse, the exact book I wrote when I was in my early twenties…” It is therefore a lot easier to compare the differences between this book to the others, the things he held on to and the things he does no longer have in his books.
After a man is murdered in his study in the year of 1960 the story leaps forward in time to the year 1989 when the professional basketball player David Baskin and his wife, the ex-supermodel Laura Ayars are on their honeymoon in Australia. One day David goes for a swim but never returns. Laura panics and contacts David’s best friend T.C. He is later asked to identify a body that has been found; T.C. identifies the corpse to be David. Laura is devastated. She informs her father Dr. James Ayars and her sister Gloria about the death of her husband. Then she returns to her home in Boston. James forwards the information to his wife Mary, Laura’s mother. When Laura returns to Boston the characters of Serita and Stan are introduced. Later on in the story the mysterious character of Mark Seidman makes an entry in the story as well. Around that time Laura starts to look into the death of her husband as she has ha lot of trouble letting him go. Laura’s aunt Judy Simmons knows what has happened but she is murdered before she can turn the last bit of the puzzle over to Laura.
A woman is murdered, a boy goes missing and Mike recalls the time he asked his son to Hold Tight. The story begins as Mike and Tia begin to worry about their sixteen-year-old, Adam. He has been acting strangely and it is not only due to the fact that his best friend Spencer Hill committed suicide. They put a spyware on their son’s computer and when they find out about a party with alcohol and drugs they make sure he will not go. It only results in Adam running away. Meanwhile their daughter Jill spends almost all her time with her friend Yasmin, a very sad and angry eleven-year-old. Their teacher, Joe Lewiston snapped and said that Yasmin had facial hair causing all the kids in their class to call her XY (after one of the pairs of chromosomes in the male gender). Another woman goes missing. During their search for the missing woman the police find that the murdered Jane Doe is Yasmin’s mother.
Wendy Tynes, the main character in Caught, works with a TV-crew catching sexual predators. She gets a tip that a man named Dan Mercer is a paedophile. When caught in an underage girl’s house Mercer runs away and no one can reach him for three months, except for his lawyer and his ex-wife Jenna Wheeler who believed in his innocence. At the same time as Dan Mercer goes into hiding a seventeen-year-old named Haley McWaid never returns home after a night out with her friends. Wendy Tynes meets up with Dan as he contacts her three months later. However, their meeting is interrupted by Ed Grayson stepping into the trailer, firing a gun - hitting Dan Mercer in the head. Wendy gets out of there and contacts the police. Returning to the scene there is no corpse to be found. Wendy decides to figure out what is going on and she talks to Dan’s family and friends. In her search for the truth she meets Phil Turnball, Dan’s college roommate, and she begins to think that she might have been mistaken about Dan Mercer. Then Haley McWaid’s cell phone turns up in Dan’s abandoned hotel room.
Without any further analysis other than just looking at the plots of the three novels one can see that Coben enjoys writing very complex stories with many characters that are connected in different ways. Hold Tight is the most convoluted story of the three as it is two stories that take place simultaneously, that barely are connected at all. Additionally, there are several side-tracks. Both in Play Dead and in Caught the stories included may be labyrinthine but they are connected in more ways than just relationships between the involved characters.
All three novels are written in the third person. Only Caught has got a different narrative in the prologue and epilogue, and it is then written in the first person. Writing in the first person often gives the reader a feeling that they are reading a diary entry, whereas something written in the third person induces a feeling of being an observer. Coben did write about mysterious characters that were not mentioned by name for a long time in Play Dead, but that effect to create suspense is not a part of the other two novels. It might be that he did not enjoy writing as mysterious as he did, and decided to put his energy into producing brilliantly and breath-taking novels, with a lot of substance.
Laura in Play Dead has a lot of trouble letting David go. Therefore is the theme of eternal love – love beyond “until death tear you apart” – rather profound. On the day of her dead husband’s memorial service she is thinking “He can’t be dead. He just can’t be. Please tell me that this is just a stupid joke and when I get a hold of him I’m going to beat the shit out of him for scaring me like this. Please tell him enough is enough, that I know he is okay, that I know his body was not shredded on coral and rocks.” (pg. 67) The fact that David was taken so suddenly and without warning makes it much harder for Laura to move on with her life, trying so hard to hold on to what would have been.
Love is truly the major theme in Play Dead. It makes people do some insane things, but James Ayars and David Baskin would probably take the noble prize in “a fool in love”. During their honeymoon, David is told that he just married his half-sister. He is asked to leave her and keep their father’s secret. David loves Laura too much to hurt her by leaving her without an excuse so he stages his own death. He believes that she will have an easier time moving on with her life if he dies rather than vanishes. Maybe he could have told her about what was going on and they could have figured something out together. It is easy to be wise after all the facts are in as it turned out that they were not siblings at all. Hence, it poses no difficulty to say that they still could have loved each other. It is difficult for the reader to imagine what David was going through after his conversation with Mary, and one could probably never truly put themselves in his shoes.
James Ayars even did more insane things than David because of his love to Mary. His love got two men murdered, made him abort his wife’s illegitimate child without her knowledge and murder his sister-in-law. It was more than his love to his wife – it was his love to his family. “The whole foundation that supported his [James’s] family would crumble into worthless ruins. Families, like lives, are fragile things. They are held together with flimsy tissue. Stretch that tissue too far…” (pg. 510) It is his belief that he is the one that can protect the family. That belief has twisted his brain, causing it to tell him that he needed to do what he did. The first murder, when James shot Sinclair Baskin, the reader sympathises with James; Sinclair had an affair with James’s wife and got her pregnant, destroying James family. Nevertheless, when James aborts an innocent child the reader cannot understand him any longer, he probably do not understand himself. “... I killed Sinclair Baskin. I put a gun against his forehead and I pulled the trigger, but it was an act spawned from a thoughtless fury against a man who deserved to die” (pg. 366) At first he justifies his first murder victim to have deserved it. Later on he thinks “What about the cruel butchery of my second nameless victim? Can I dismiss that as easily as the death of Sinclair Baskin? No. Guilt will burn eternally inside me for slaying that unstained soul... History would say that the decision was a clever one and in the end, I have to agree.” (pg. 366) James believes that the end justifies the means, but sometimes that saying does not pull through. He murdered and not just once. Nothing can justify what he did.
An issue that never dies and that is brought up in Play Dead is what effect the past has on the present. Mary’s, Judy’s and James’s actions in the year of 1960 damage the relationship between 1989. If Mary had not cheated on her husband she would not have thought that she gave birth to Sinclair Baskin’s daughter and she would not have told David that he married his sister, as she would not have thought so. If Judy had not told James about Mary’s and Sinclair’s affair, Sinclair might still be alive and Stan Baskin would have had a normal childhood, and he would not become a gambler with a twisted view on women. If James had not aborted the unborn child then Laura would not even exist and David might actually have fallen in love with his own sister. One gets the feeling that Harlan Coben wishes to tell the world that if you do something bad it will always come back and hit you in unimaginable ways.
The apparent theme in Hold Tight is family, more specifically concerning what one would do for the ones they love. This shines through in so many ways throughout the book, since there are so many families that are a part of the novel. Two examples are the Baye family, where everyone in some way does something for the ones they love and the Loriman family where Susan Loriman does everything possible to find a donor to her son, without revealing the truth about the identity of his father. The best instances, however, are Nash and the Novak family. Marianne, Guy Novak’s ex-wife, blackmails another human being because he hurt her child. “There had been injury. There had been injustice. There had been blind rage. There had been the burning, primitive desire for revenge. And none of this biblical (or heck – evolutionary) “eye for an eye” stuff – what had they used to call what she´d done? Massive retaliation.” (pg. 7) This sentence awakes thoughts in the reader; what could cause such anger? Someone hurting the ones you love. Marianne punishes Joe Lewiston for what he did to the only living person she loves. In return Nash murders her.
Nash is the murderer in Hold Tight, and the reader knows this from the start. It is his love to his late wife that makes him do what he does. She changed him when they met, and she when she died he got back to normal, to crazy. “Cassandra died and that was when he knew for certain that it was all a crock and a joke and once she was gone, Nash didn’t have the strength to worry about stopping the crazy anymore” (pg. 239) One changes if they love another human being. They want to be their very best, so that they will not lose the one they love. Cassandra asks Nash to take care of her family after she is gone and he promises to do so. Joe was her brother and when he gets scared of the blackmailing he contacts his former brother-on-law.
An issue that is brought up in Hold Tight is privacy, and how much parents should know about their children. Does knowing more about your child does more harm than good? Tia and Mike start spying on their sixteen-year-old son, causing him to run away. However, if Betsy Hill had spied on her son, she would have known what was going on in his life, and maybe she could have prevented Spencer’s suicide. How much should we really know about our family? It is a difficult question to answer as it depends on what one wants to know and what one needs to know.
Children act the way they see their parents act, and Coben brings up this issue in Hold Tight when Jill and Yasmin, two eleven-year-old girls, start spying on their parents and Jill’s brother, just like their parents spy on others. “Kids don’t do what their parents say –they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here?” (pgs. 427-428) This implies that parents are, at least partially, blamed for the wrongs of their children. Or at least that they should be. Parents are role models and they should act accordingly. If they do not do so, they will be accused of being bad parents by the society. The fact that children impersonate their parents is visible throughout the society today, and in these cases it is much worse than in the book. Boys that were beaten as they were growing up, or saw their mothers get beaten by their fathers, are much more likely to hit their wife and children when they grow up. Coben wants to share this with the world, and make all his readers consider this, hoping to change at least one parent’s behaviour.
One theme in Caught that is very clear is Death. Coben makes the reader consider what happens after they have left the living life. Is one dead just because they died? Can someone get hurt by something one does after they are dead? Jenna Wheeler expresses an opinion that is somewhat different as it is against all major religions. “Dan is dead. One thing we had in common, neither of us believed in an afterlife. Dead is dead. He wouldn’t care about being rehabilitated now.” (pg. 293) This quote alone makes one wonder what awaits after death, and if there is a life after this at all.
Another theme in Caught is secrets. What does one really know about another being? “He kept something from me. I knew that. We all do that, don’t we? No one knows us entirely. In the end, it’s kind of a cliché, but maybe you never really know a person.” (pg. 290) Does one truly know everything about their best friend, their true love or their family? Everyone hides something. It might be nothing, yet in some cases it is huge, terrible secrets. As the secret that caused Dan Mercer to disappear. One might share all their secrets, but not to the same person. If another human being knows your every thought you would feel vulnerable, as they could crush you in a second.
An issue in Caught is alcohol addiction and teenagers drinking. This is a major problem in the society today. People under eighteen, or sixteen in certain countries, are not allowed to drink. Though, somehow, they get hold of alcohol anyway, and they drink enough to hurt themselves. Some parents, in lack of better judgement, let their children drink in their own house, claiming that it creates a safe environment, and decreases the dangers that come with drinking. Still, if the parents are supportive, and arrange “drinking parties” for children – that is people under the age of eighteen – they will not minimise the number of drinking teenagers, they will only make it bigger. Some teenagers are rebellious, and drink less if their parents show approval, but they are certainly not a majority. “’Four thousand kids per year die of alcohol overdose,’” (pg.270) Four thousand is a terrible number, no matter if it is worldwide or only in the USA, and that is probably why Harlan Coben let one of his characters, a teenage girl, die from an alcohol overdose.
A second issue that is brought up is whether to forgive or seek revenge. Christa got badly hurt when Dan Mercer, Phil Turnball and their friends broke in to the house she was living in during their years at college, and her vision and her face were permanently damaged. Yet she is forgiving. “And there it was. There is so much wisdom in the simple – a truth you can hear in the tone, unmistakeable for anything else. ‘You live in this world, you collide with others. That’s the way it is. We collide and sometimes someone gets hurt. They just wanted to steal a silly pair of boxers. It went wrong. For a short time I hated them. But when you think about it, what good does that do? It takes so much to hold on to hate – you lose your grip on what’s important, you know?” (pg. 325) Christa decided that it wasn’t worth it, and she gained so much more from life. She might be half blind but she could enjoy the happy memories so much more as she lets go of the hate.
This could be compared to Phil’s view of the situation. He said that he was the reason for the pain that Christa had to go through, that he threw something at the mirror so that it broke, since he was the rich one of his friends and he could afford being kicked out of Princeton. That was a great gesture from Phil, but he hated them, especially Dan, and he couldn’t let go of the hate. “’Whatever else was left of me – whatever good was there – it’s gone now too. That’s what revenge does to you. It eats away at your soul. I should have never opened that door.’” (pgs. 357-358) Phil took out his revenge on his former friends, blaming them for messing up his life when it was him that stole 2 million dollars. The hate and desire for revenge possessed him. It poisoned him, and eventually caused him to commit suicide. Hate damages the soul, and revenge destroys it. There is almost no way to get it back, except for searching forgiveness, and then death is an easy way out.
Harlan Coben uses different themes and issues as the palpable ones in his three novels but they all create thoughts within the reader. He makes one consider both sides of a story, stepping in to the shoes of the characters and tries to understand their views. Death and love are always present as at least one murder is committed in each novel and there is always at least one person that loves the murder victim enough to be affected by their death. The issues and themes are often timeless, for example revenge has been an issue or theme in literary works for centuries. One exception is underage drinking. That is an issue that is growing with today’s society. The issues are serious and the reader might even change opinion about a subject after reading one of these novels. In Hold Tight Coben presents a few more issues, but only vaguely. The issues in Caught and Play Dead are therefore a bit clearer as the entire book is dedicated to the issues in question whereas Hold Tight moves away from the subject at times.
Harlan Coben writes crime novels and they tend to be very similar in style. He creates the differences between them by including different themes and issues. Coben is an author. An author has the power to share his views with the world in his works. More importantly; the world listens. When reading a book one is very focused on the plot and if the writer puts forward certain issues in the plot it will cause the reader to think about them, and consider their own opinion. Harlan Coben, as a number one bestseller is in a true power position to make people think, and use their heads for a change. He uses that position by informing the audience about truly important matters. “His trademark is twists that you don’t see coming and his writing is not just exciting but also thought-provoking.” (Daily Mail) True.
Sources:
Coben, H., Play Dead, 2010, Orion, Great Britain
Coben, H., Hold Tight, 2008, Orion, Great Britain
Coben, H., Caught, 2010, Orion, Great Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Coben
This is an Essay I wrote in school last term:
Three of Harlan Coben’s outstanding Novels – with focus on their themes and issues
Harlan Coben is a number one bestseller; he has written twenty novels since 1990. This essay concerns three of his standalone novels: Play Dead written in 1990, Hold Tight written in 2008 and Caught written in 2010 – his most recent published work. (wikipedia.org, 1/12 2010) The Daily Mail writes “One of the most consistently brilliant thriller writers, Coben delivers again”. His books are exhilarating thrillers, which are impossible to put away due to the intriguing plots. They awake thoughts and emotions concerning people of all ages, ethnicities and genders. After reading said novels it is interesting to analyse and compare the themes and issues. A short mentioning of the plot and narrative will, of course, be made.
Play Dead was Coben’s first novel, though it was published 2010, and in the introduction he himself wrote “…please know that I haven’t read Play Dead in at least twenty years. I didn’t want to rewrite it and pass it off as a new book. I hate when authors do that. So this is, for better or for worse, the exact book I wrote when I was in my early twenties…” It is therefore a lot easier to compare the differences between this book to the others, the things he held on to and the things he does no longer have in his books. After a man is murdered in his study in the year of 1960 the story leaps forward in time to the year 1989 when the professional basketball player David Baskin and his wife, the ex-supermodel Laura Ayars are on their honeymoon in Australia. One day David goes for a swim but never returns. Laura panics and contacts David’s best friend T.C. He is later asked to identify a body that has been found; T.C. identifies the corpse to be David. Laura is devastated. She informs her father Dr. James Ayars and her sister Gloria about the death of her husband. Then she returns to her home in Boston. James forwards the information to his wife Mary, Laura’s mother. When Laura returns to Boston the characters of Serita and Stan are introduced. Later on in the story the mysterious character of Mark Seidman makes an entry in the story as well. Around that time Laura starts to look into the death of her husband as she has ha lot of trouble letting him go. Laura’s aunt Judy Simmons knows what has happened but she is murdered before she can turn the last bit of the puzzle over to Laura.
A woman is murdered, a boy goes missing and Mike recalls the time he asked his son to Hold Tight. The story begins as Mike and Tia begin to worry about their sixteen-year-old, Adam. He has been acting strangely and it is not only due to the fact that his best friend Spencer Hill committed suicide. They put a spyware on their son’s computer and when they find out about a party with alcohol and drugs they make sure he will not go. It only results in Adam running away. Meanwhile their daughter Jill spends almost all her time with her friend Yasmin, a very sad and angry eleven-year-old. Their teacher, Joe Lewiston snapped and said that Yasmin had facial hair causing all the kids in their class to call her XY (after one of the pairs of chromosomes in the male gender). Another woman goes missing. During their search for the missing woman the police find that the murdered Jane Doe is Yasmin’s mother.
Wendy Tynes, the main character in Caught, works with a TV-crew catching sexual predators. She gets a tip that a man named Dan Mercer is a paedophile. When caught in an underage girl’s house Mercer runs away and no one can reach him for three months, except for his lawyer and his ex-wife Jenna Wheeler who believed in his innocence. At the same time as Dan Mercer goes into hiding a seventeen-year-old named Haley McWaid never returns home after a night out with her friends. Wendy Tynes meets up with Dan as he contacts her three months later. However, their meeting is interrupted by Ed Grayson stepping into the trailer, firing a gun - hitting Dan Mercer in the head. Wendy gets out of there and contacts the police. Returning to the scene there is no corpse to be found. Wendy decides to figure out what is going on and she talks to Dan’s family and friends. In her search for the truth she meets Phil Turnball, Dan’s college roommate, and she begins to think that she might have been mistaken about Dan Mercer. Then Haley McWaid’s cell phone turns up in Dan’s abandoned hotel room.Without any further analysis other than just looking at the plots of the three novels one can see that Coben enjoys writing very complex stories with many characters that are connected in different ways. Hold Tight is the most convoluted story of the three as it is two stories that take place simultaneously, that barely are connected at all. Additionally, there are several side-tracks. Both in Play Dead and in Caught the stories included may be labyrinthine but they are connected in more ways than just relationships between the involved characters.
All three novels are written in the third person. Only Caught has got a different narrative in the prologue and epilogue, and it is then written in the first person. Writing in the first person often gives the reader a feeling that they are reading a diary entry, whereas something written in the third person induces a feeling of being an observer. Coben did write about mysterious characters that were not mentioned by name for a long time in Play Dead, but that effect to create suspense is not a part of the other two novels. It might be that he did not enjoy writing as mysterious as he did, and decided to put his energy into producing brilliantly and breath-taking novels, with a lot of substance.
Laura in Play Dead has a lot of trouble letting David go. Therefore is the theme of eternal love – love beyond “until death tear you apart” – rather profound. On the day of her dead husband’s memorial service she is thinking “He can’t be dead. He just can’t be. Please tell me that this is just a stupid joke and when I get a hold of him I’m going to beat the shit out of him for scaring me like this. Please tell him enough is enough, that I know he is okay, that I know his body was not shredded on coral and rocks.” (pg. 67) The fact that David was taken so suddenly and without warning makes it much harder for Laura to move on with her life, trying so hard to hold on to what would have been.
Love is truly the major theme in Play Dead. It makes people do some insane things, but James Ayars and David Baskin would probably take the noble prize in “a fool in love”. During their honeymoon, David is told that he just married his half-sister. He is asked to leave her and keep their father’s secret. David loves Laura too much to hurt her by leaving her without an excuse so he stages his own death. He believes that she will have an easier time moving on with her life if he dies rather than vanishes. Maybe he could have told her about what was going on and they could have figured something out together. It is easy to be wise after all the facts are in as it turned out that they were not siblings at all. Hence, it poses no difficulty to say that they still could have loved each other. It is difficult for the reader to imagine what David was going through after his conversation with Mary, and one could probably never truly put themselves in his shoes.
James Ayars even did more insane things than David because of his love to Mary. His love got two men murdered, made him abort his wife’s illegitimate child without her knowledge and murder his sister-in-law. It was more than his love to his wife – it was his love to his family. “The whole foundation that supported his [James’s] family would crumble into worthless ruins. Families, like lives, are fragile things. They are held together with flimsy tissue. Stretch that tissue too far…” (pg. 510) It is his belief that he is the one that can protect the family. That belief has twisted his brain, causing it to tell him that he needed to do what he did. The first murder, when James shot Sinclair Baskin, the reader sympathises with James; Sinclair had an affair with James’s wife and got her pregnant, destroying James family. Nevertheless, when James aborts an innocent child the reader cannot understand him any longer, he probably do not understand himself. “... I killed Sinclair Baskin. I put a gun against his forehead and I pulled the trigger, but it was an act spawned from a thoughtless fury against a man who deserved to die” (pg. 366) At first he justifies his first murder victim to have deserved it. Later on he thinks “What about the cruel butchery of my second nameless victim? Can I dismiss that as easily as the death of Sinclair Baskin? No. Guilt will burn eternally inside me for slaying that unstained soul... History would say that the decision was a clever one and in the end, I have to agree.” (pg. 366) James believes that the end justifies the means, but sometimes that saying does not pull through. He murdered and not just once. Nothing can justify what he did.
An issue that never dies and that is brought up in Play Dead is what effect the past has on the present. Mary’s, Judy’s and James’s actions in the year of 1960 damage the relationship between 1989. If Mary had not cheated on her husband she would not have thought that she gave birth to Sinclair Baskin’s daughter and she would not have told David that he married his sister, as she would not have thought so. If Judy had not told James about Mary’s and Sinclair’s affair, Sinclair might still be alive and Stan Baskin would have had a normal childhood, and he would not become a gambler with a twisted view on women. If James had not aborted the unborn child then Laura would not even exist and David might actually have fallen in love with his own sister. One gets the feeling that Harlan Coben wishes to tell the world that if you do something bad it will always come back and hit you in unimaginable ways.
The apparent theme in Hold Tight is family, more specifically concerning what one would do for the ones they love. This shines through in so many ways throughout the book, since there are so many families that are a part of the novel. Two examples are the Baye family, where everyone in some way does something for the ones they love and the Loriman family where Susan Loriman does everything possible to find a donor to her son, without revealing the truth about the identity of his father. The best instances, however, are Nash and the Novak family. Marianne, Guy Novak’s ex-wife, blackmails another human being because he hurt her child. “There had been injury. There had been injustice. There had been blind rage. There had been the burning, primitive desire for revenge. And none of this biblical (or heck – evolutionary) “eye for an eye” stuff – what had they used to call what she´d done? Massive retaliation.” (pg. 7) This sentence awakes thoughts in the reader; what could cause such anger? Someone hurting the ones you love. Marianne punishes Joe Lewiston for what he did to the only living person she loves. In return Nash murders her.
Nash is the murderer in Hold Tight, and the reader knows this from the start. It is his love to his late wife that makes him do what he does. She changed him when they met, and she when she died he got back to normal, to crazy. “Cassandra died and that was when he knew for certain that it was all a crock and a joke and once she was gone, Nash didn’t have the strength to worry about stopping the crazy anymore” (pg. 239) One changes if they love another human being. They want to be their very best, so that they will not lose the one they love. Cassandra asks Nash to take care of her family after she is gone and he promises to do so. Joe was her brother and when he gets scared of the blackmailing he contacts his former brother-on-law.
An issue that is brought up in Hold Tight is privacy, and how much parents should know about their children. Does knowing more about your child does more harm than good? Tia and Mike start spying on their sixteen-year-old son, causing him to run away. However, if Betsy Hill had spied on her son, she would have known what was going on in his life, and maybe she could have prevented Spencer’s suicide. How much should we really know about our family? It is a difficult question to answer as it depends on what one wants to know and what one needs to know.
Children act the way they see their parents act, and Coben brings up this issue in Hold Tight when Jill and Yasmin, two eleven-year-old girls, start spying on their parents and Jill’s brother, just like their parents spy on others. “Kids don’t do what their parents say –they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here?” (pgs. 427-428) This implies that parents are, at least partially, blamed for the wrongs of their children. Or at least that they should be. Parents are role models and they should act accordingly. If they do not do so, they will be accused of being bad parents by the society. The fact that children impersonate their parents is visible throughout the society today, and in these cases it is much worse than in the book. Boys that were beaten as they were growing up, or saw their mothers get beaten by their fathers, are much more likely to hit their wife and children when they grow up. Coben wants to share this with the world, and make all his readers consider this, hoping to change at least one parent’s behaviour.
One theme in Caught that is very clear is Death. Coben makes the reader consider what happens after they have left the living life. Is one dead just because they died? Can someone get hurt by something one does after they are dead? Jenna Wheeler expresses an opinion that is somewhat different as it is against all major religions. “Dan is dead. One thing we had in common, neither of us believed in an afterlife. Dead is dead. He wouldn’t care about being rehabilitated now.” (pg. 293) This quote alone makes one wonder what awaits after death, and if there is a life after this at all.
Another theme in Caught is secrets. What does one really know about another being? “He kept something from me. I knew that. We all do that, don’t we? No one knows us entirely. In the end, it’s kind of a cliché, but maybe you never really know a person.” (pg. 290) Does one truly know everything about their best friend, their true love or their family? Everyone hides something. It might be nothing, yet in some cases it is huge, terrible secrets. As the secret that caused Dan Mercer to disappear. One might share all their secrets, but not to the same person. If another human being knows your every thought you would feel vulnerable, as they could crush you in a second.
An issue in Caught is alcohol addiction and teenagers drinking. This is a major problem in the society today. People under eighteen, or sixteen in certain countries, are not allowed to drink. Though, somehow, they get hold of alcohol anyway, and they drink enough to hurt themselves. Some parents, in lack of better judgement, let their children drink in their own house, claiming that it creates a safe environment, and decreases the dangers that come with drinking. Still, if the parents are supportive, and arrange “drinking parties” for children – that is people under the age of eighteen – they will not minimise the number of drinking teenagers, they will only make it bigger. Some teenagers are rebellious, and drink less if their parents show approval, but they are certainly not a majority. “’Four thousand kids per year die of alcohol overdose,’” (pg.270) Four thousand is a terrible number, no matter if it is worldwide or only in the USA, and that is probably why Harlan Coben let one of his characters, a teenage girl, die from an alcohol overdose.
A second issue that is brought up is whether to forgive or seek revenge. Christa got badly hurt when Dan Mercer, Phil Turnball and their friends broke in to the house she was living in during their years at college, and her vision and her face were permanently damaged. Yet she is forgiving. “And there it was. There is so much wisdom in the simple – a truth you can hear in the tone, unmistakeable for anything else. ‘You live in this world, you collide with others. That’s the way it is. We collide and sometimes someone gets hurt. They just wanted to steal a silly pair of boxers. It went wrong. For a short time I hated them. But when you think about it, what good does that do? It takes so much to hold on to hate – you lose your grip on what’s important, you know?” (pg. 325) Christa decided that it wasn’t worth it, and she gained so much more from life. She might be half blind but she could enjoy the happy memories so much more as she lets go of the hate.
This could be compared to Phil’s view of the situation. He said that he was the reason for the pain that Christa had to go through, that he threw something at the mirror so that it broke, since he was the rich one of his friends and he could afford being kicked out of Princeton. That was a great gesture from Phil, but he hated them, especially Dan, and he couldn’t let go of the hate. “’Whatever else was left of me – whatever good was there – it’s gone now too. That’s what revenge does to you. It eats away at your soul. I should have never opened that door.’” (pgs. 357-358) Phil took out his revenge on his former friends, blaming them for messing up his life when it was him that stole 2 million dollars. The hate and desire for revenge possessed him. It poisoned him, and eventually caused him to commit suicide. Hate damages the soul, and revenge destroys it. There is almost no way to get it back, except for searching forgiveness, and then death is an easy way out.
Harlan Coben uses different themes and issues as the palpable ones in his three novels but they all create thoughts within the reader. He makes one consider both sides of a story, stepping in to the shoes of the characters and tries to understand their views. Death and love are always present as at least one murder is committed in each novel and there is always at least one person that loves the murder victim enough to be affected by their death. The issues and themes are often timeless, for example revenge has been an issue or theme in literary works for centuries. One exception is underage drinking. That is an issue that is growing with today’s society. The issues are serious and the reader might even change opinion about a subject after reading one of these novels. In Hold Tight Coben presents a few more issues, but only vaguely. The issues in Caught and Play Dead are therefore a bit clearer as the entire book is dedicated to the issues in question whereas Hold Tight moves away from the subject at times.
Harlan Coben writes crime novels and they tend to be very similar in style. He creates the differences between them by including different themes and issues. Coben is an author. An author has the power to share his views with the world in his works. More importantly; the world listens. When reading a book one is very focused on the plot and if the writer puts forward certain issues in the plot it will cause the reader to think about them, and consider their own opinion. Harlan Coben, as a number one bestseller is in a true power position to make people think, and use their heads for a change. He uses that position by informing the audience about truly important matters. “His trademark is twists that you don’t see coming and his writing is not just exciting but also thought-provoking.” (Daily Mail) True.
Sources:
Coben, H., Play Dead, 2010, Orion, Great Britain
Coben, H., Hold Tight, 2008, Orion, Great Britain
Coben, H., Caught, 2010, Orion, Great Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Coben
Friday, May 6, 2011
Happy :)
Hi I'm just so happy right now :) therefore I decided that the song of today should be really happy and upbeat. So today's song is "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LISFw8-eQZU
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LISFw8-eQZU
Love,
Frida
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Was on a show yesterday
Hi! Sorry I didn't write yesterday but I got home near midnight because I went to a show (similar to a musical, I think it's swedish and I don't know the English name for it so whatever). I was there with my best friend Sara, and a few other people and they had covers of a few different songs, so Yesterday's song is: "You've got a friend in me" by Randy Newman
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXARdPb4YBs
Today's song: "Carry You Home" by James Blunt, I really like this song!! I'm close to tears everytime I listen to it.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IFF9yu5i3k
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXARdPb4YBs
Today's song: "Carry You Home" by James Blunt, I really like this song!! I'm close to tears everytime I listen to it.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IFF9yu5i3k
Love,
Frida
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Missing Hair!
I'm really missing the musical so I decided to have one last tribute to the musical "Hair". Therefore, today's song is "I got life"
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pa1QvSD440&feature=related (not the best sound but it's from the movie so it's a fun scene)
Love,
Frida
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pa1QvSD440&feature=related (not the best sound but it's from the movie so it's a fun scene)
Love,
Frida
Monday, May 2, 2011
Stressed out
Hi! Today we had the last show of Hair, and I'm gonna miss it so much! And now I realize how much schoolwork there is to be done.
Because of my oral national exams in german this week the song of the day is... you guessed it! - German!
Today's song: "99 Luftballons" with Nena
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQYQTFudrqc
Yesterday's song is from Hair, because of the premiere. It is the opening song "Aquarius"
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl5NewGK1O8&
Love,
Frida
Because of my oral national exams in german this week the song of the day is... you guessed it! - German!
Today's song: "99 Luftballons" with Nena
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQYQTFudrqc
Yesterday's song is from Hair, because of the premiere. It is the opening song "Aquarius"
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl5NewGK1O8&
Love,
Frida
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