Lauren Oliver Before I Fall

1196 Words3 Pages

She walks like a model. She wears the expensive designer purses the week designers release them. She never thinks twice after she takes a risk. She has the IQ of a squirrel, but people should not underestimate the power she holds. The novel Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver includes a complicated plot and format, as well as a well-developed characterization of the protagonist and other characters. Most people can agree that a complex plotline can keep a reader engaged in a book. Samantha Kingston has to undergo a full turn-around from being the socialite-popular girl to manifesting the traits of a caring young woman, all within one week. The plot twists around back and forth between monologue and the day in which the protagonist, Sam, is living …show more content…

In the novel, Sam, the protagonist, repeated the same day for seven days after she got into a car accident. The reader deems Sam to be in a coma or maybe unconscious when speaking through the book, but she was not. Lauren Oliver wrote a monologue of Sam speaking to the reader for the last two pages of the book. It started out with, “They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that’s not how it happens for me,” (Oliver 469) and ended with the statement, “The rest you have to find out for yourself” (Oliver 470). These last pages of the book left the reader on a thought about what had happened to Sam. An inference can be made to say that she did indeed die from the car accident, but was she dead the whole time? Was she actually in a coma and just dreaming the repeated days? For these reasons, the ending of this novel was not at all what the audience may have desired after reading almost five hundred pages. Readers would most-definitely feel better about this ending if it had ended differently. For example, instead of a monologue by Sam at the end, the author could’ve written in an entry from a doctor saying that she hadn’t made it. Better yet, the novel could’ve ended with the same monologue format, but it would have had to be longer with a detailed description on how Sam had

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