North Of Beautiful Character Analysis

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North of Beautiful is about a girl named Terra Rose Cooper with a “flawed” face due to the port-wine stain on her cheek. Tera faces many challenges, such as hiding port-wine stain with makeup, her urge to go to art school, and most of all, being verbally abused by her father. In the book she says “… I never went anywhere without my usual geologic strata of moisturizer, sunblock, medical concealer, foundation, and powder.” (page 1) That’s probably because her birthmark diverts too much attention to her face than to the rest of her, where she has more control. I know this because on page 30 she says, “While my face might have been far from ideal, I made sure my body came as close as humanly as possible.” Terra wants to go to Williams College because she wants “to meet people…” (page 38) and escape to a place that’s better …show more content…

Other than her face being “flawed”, her whole family is “flawed”; thanks to her father. Unfortunately for Terra, she has an endless amount of insults about her “ugly face” and for her mother, Lois, she gets comments about her weight, her cooking, and her dietary habits. (e.g.: “I doubt your doctor would be fine with you eating even one one-hundredth of that.” and “You wouldn’t be so fat if you’d use just use your brains.”) (page 33) Fortunately for her older brother, they’ve already escaped. Her oldest brother works halfway around the world in China, and the second oldest attends college but never comes home. I think the reason for their avoidance and Terra’s reason to escape is that her father is determined to control everyone in the family by being cruel and constantly criticize. But when coming home from a laser surgery removal she and her mom decide to stop for coffee but end up slipping on black ice, having the car spin out of control, and almost hitting a boy! They start talking in the coffee shop was Terra realizes that Jacob has a cleft lip.

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