After the Wreck, I picked myself up, spread my wings, and flew away. By Joyce Oates
While reading this book (which i which I'll refer to as atw) it made me feel kind of bored. I felt as the though the writing was very repetitive and didn't expand on many important issues. Throughout the entire story, its just keeps coming back to this idea that "I can be a messed up kid because no one loves me!" Which i thought was so untrue and very annoying. I feel like the author wanted to leer you into that idea so she made it all the main character would think about. The book left out the perspective of the ones who actually loved the main character, Jenna. In the book Jenna would have fights with adults who loved her and she seemed to keep telling them you don't care about me, you don't love me, leaving out their perspective about the adults emotion. The author pretty much never let the adults speak.
Another example of this is when the father tries to reach out to Jenna after the accident but shes shutting him down, not letting him explain why he left. As a reader, i did want to know why he left and how he felt when Jenna refused to live with him. While i find these writing techniques a little boring and discouraging, i can see why an author may add them. They give a little bit of to the main characters mind a reason to why Jenna may feel the need to do these drugs and party and drink alcohol instead of the real reason which is because her mom has past. She feels the need to blame it on others as many do it an upsetting situation and if someone explains shes wrong to blame those people she'll have to find the real reason and open up the sadness and despair she felt after her mom died that she locked away. I think that's also a reason she didn't want to see a therapist. Because she was afraid of what she might find.
I love your idea about how the perspectives of those who loved Jenna were left out, or rather pushed away. Why do you think they were left out? I haven't read the book, but to me it seems that they may have been left out because Jenna was oblivious to the fact that they loved and cared about her, or she didn't love herself enough to think anyone could ever love her.
ReplyDeleteI think that the repetitive idea that the author was trying to get across was for a reason. It may have been a teenager who is really just leaving out what the adults who love her actions. The author may want to get this point across because she believes that this often happens with teenagers and (assuming this is a young adult book) is trying to make a point across that someone does love you and that you have look at someone's actions in order to see how they actually feel instead of declaring something with no conclusion
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