In the book If I Stay by Gayle Forman, Mia, the main character, is full of many different personality traits but in this essay we are only going to discuss a few. In the book, Mia is all of a sudden ripped away from her family because of a fatal car accident. With her parents and her little brother gone Mia is stuck between making the decision to either Stay with her friend Amy and her boyfriend Adam, or leave and be with her brother and parents. Before the crash Mia is very happy, she is in love, and has a sense of humor. After the crash Mia is very scared and relieved. In the beginning of the book Mia is very happy to be with her family, for example on page 14 it states, “I hear the first few bars of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata no. 3, which …show more content…
I want to break the double doors. I want to smash the nurses’ station. I want it all the go away. I want it to go away. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in the hospital. I don’t want to be in this suspended state where I can see what’s happening, where I’m aware of what I’m feeling without being able to actually feel it. I cannot scream until my throat hurts or break a window with my fist until my hand bleeds, or pull out my hair in clumps until the pain in my scalp overcomes the one in my heart.” (If I stay, Gayle Forman, Top of page 161) Mia is very stressed and depressed after hearing the news of her little brother’s death. Lastly, Mia is relieved she gets permission from her grandpa that if she wants to leave after all that's happened then she can. “He looks like he’s about to leave, but then he doubles back to my bedside, bends so his face is level with my ear, and whispers into it. “It’s okay,” he tells me. “If you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.” His voice cracks with emotion. He stops, clears his throat, takes a breath, and continues. “But that’s what I want and I could see why it might not be what you want. So I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It’s okay if you have to leave us. It’s okay if you want to stop fighting.” For the first time since i realized Teddy was gone, too, I feel something unclench. I feel myself breathe.” (If I Stay, Gayle Forman, Top of page 181) As you see from this passage Mia is very relieved that her grandpa told her
She needs to be strong for the whole family while dealing with this tough situation, and most importantly, she has to be encouraging for her daughter. Jessica’s mom murmurs to her, “Things will get better. I promise you, they will” (Van Draanen 58). Her mom knows that her life is grim and it feels like the end of the world to her daughter. She can only make her feel better by continuing to encourage her and give her love and support. Jessica thinks to herself, “She waves back, but even from the curb I can feel her worry, and I suddenly realize that it has nothing to do with the wheelchair or with me falling. The last time Fiona drove me away in her Subaru, it took me more than a week to come home” (Van Draanen 77). Her mom has to decide whether she is going to live in fear of her daughter getting hurt every time she leaves home. This accident was a trying time for everybody in their family and it affected all of
Margaret was grieving her friend’s death and probably the loss of her last chance to freedom; she was closely hugging the corpse. The nurses were like vultures circling above the corpse; Margaret had to be restrained for the corpse to be taken away from the beige room.
Her brother isn’t there for her and she feels so alone, she begins to cut herself. She doesn’t know how to deal with the fact of no longer having her parents in her
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Gramps takes a moment to tell Mia that it is okay if she needs to go. He is the only one who truly understands both options. As bad as he may want Mia to be alive, he knows deep down how hard it would be to live. Image coming back to life, knowing you do not have a family to go back to. No more staying up late because of her little brother playing the drums during the ungodly hours of the night.
During the scene when Mia sees her parents and brother dead she starts to panic and freak out, to calm herself down she
It was enough for any mom to have a nervous breakdown. All Marilyn remembered was her mother being in and out of hospitals. Marilyn’s mother was working long hours at the film lab just to make ends meet. She became very tired and nervous; life became difficult for her. She had been sent to the Norwalk State hospital for Mental Diseases for a rest when Marilyn was only five years old.
This shows that the main character is very angry to be living without her mom. On the other hand, her mom thinks it is the best idea for her daughter will be able to reunite with her grandmother. " 'Oh, Izzy. She's hardly a stranger. She's family.
Think about your favorite book, now think about what makes it good. I think about the realistic elements and how the author tries to make you imagine that happening to you, unlike in little kid books. In the book If I Stay by Gayle Forman the realistic elements and events that don’t happen to much people, but Gayle Forman mainly uses examples of realistic elements to empathize the main character, in this case Mia. Although this isn’t a normal thing that happens to normal people, who knows? Mia wasn’t expecting it, I bet you weren’t either.
In the novel, If I Stay, a choice has to be made. Whether to live or to die. Gayle Forman writes about the life of Mia Hall and the decisions she makes following the tragic car accident that killed her family. When she is in her coma, she is able to come out of her body and see everything that is happening around her. She can see her lifeless body, her boyfriend, Adam, the nurses, and her grandparents. Mia can hear what they say, but she has no way of responding. The theme of this novel is about choices because the whole story revolves around the choice that Mia makes. To me, the theme of the novel is: Choosing your future can be determined by the influence certain things have on your life. Mia has the choice to live and pursue her dreams of being a cellist at Juilliard, to live to be with her boyfriend and grandparents, or to die and be with her parents and brother again.
The continuum of society’s inequality towards its citizens has been long perceived. The notion of equality that spurs from within peoples’ hearts will surely lead to disappointment, for humanity’s negativities alter an individuals composition. Society, a mental concept, has not only discriminated against its occupants but instilled alienation as well, which leads to a sense of incompletion. In his novel, Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro displays the ongoing struggles of inequality that are present in society. This message is strengthened through the representation of an array of humane elements such as acceptance, hope, love, aspirations, freedom of choice, and societal pressures. Kazuo Ishiguro incorporates narrative conventions to convey the negativities of humanity and its respected society through the portrayal of the truth: Humanity’s barriers blocking one’s fully realized composition leads to lack of fulfillment, from a range of literary theory.
If I stay, an outstanding novel by Gayle Forman published in 2009, is an emotionally gripping story. The interesting part of the novel starts with Mia’s life after the accident. The readers also learn about her life before the tragedy with the help of plentiful flashbacks. She recalls her colorful and vibrant family members so vividly that they could easily step off the page and break the hearts of the readers. Furthermore, her remembrances also highlight her passion for music and romance with her boyfriend. Moreover, the readers will find the entire novel very interesting and inspiring and will also find the climax of the novel very satisfying. The story revolves around the seventeen year old Mia who deals with the aftermath of a terrible
How do you classify rather someone is human or not? A tricky question has many different possible answers, but only a few that could be justified as being human. Kazuo Ishiguro has addressed this topic in his book Never Let Me Go. A reoccurring question throughout the novel is rather or not these clones are considered a human being or just another science project. Suspicious individuals of the surrounding communities in the novel, believed that the students were not human, because they could not reproduce, they did not have any parents, and for the slight fact that what the students were going through was morally unacceptable. In my opinion, Ishiguro shows that the clones are indeed human, because of their artwork, which proves that they have creativity, they show emotion and the clones can do human like things.
There are many themes in If I Stay, The main one is the choice of life and death. Mia is faced with the decision on after being in a car crash with her family and everyone dying but her if she wants to end it all and be with them or if she wants to stay with the other part of her family that is still alive and loves her and needs her. This is evident when Teddy dies and all she wants to do is give up. This is also evident when Adam begs her to stay and holds her making Mia realize to stay.
Her character is portrayed as being anxious through the author’s choice of dialogue in the form of diction, which is “waves of her [the mother] anxiety sink down into my belly”. The effect of this is to allow the readers to establish the emotions of the narrator, as well as establish an the uneasy tone of the passage, and how stressful and important the event of selling tobacco bales for her family is. Additionally, the narrator is seen to be uncomfortable in the setting she is present in. This is seen through the many dashes and pauses within her thoughts because she has no dialogue within this passage, “wishing- we- weren’t- here”, the dashes show her discomfort because the thought is extended, and thus more intense and heavy, wishing they could be somewhere else. The effect of the narrator’s comfort establishes her role within the family, the reason she and her sister does not have dialogue symbolizes that she has no voice within the family, as well as establishing hierarchy. The authors use dictation and writing conventions to develop the character of the narrator herself, as well as the mother. The narrator’s focus on each of her parents is additionally highlighted through