Do you ever take your life for granted? In the novel Saving Max, the main character, Danyelle, is faced with unimaginable circumstances. Her son, Max, also faces unthinkable situations. Max is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Following doctor’s advice, Danyelle enrolls Max in the Maitland Psychiatric Asylum. At Maitland, Max’s symptoms worsen and eventually Danyelle finds her son unconscious covered in the murdered blood of another patient. As his mother, Danyelle is convinced that Max could never be capable of murder. As the trial comes up, Danyelle takes risks and follows her gut to find the evidence to prove her son is innocent. I can connect with Danyelle as she find horrifying evidence against the real murderer; I can visualize the …show more content…
Danyelle finds reason to believe the mother of the victim, Marianne, could have murdered her own son. She is looking inside Marianne house when she stumbles across an alarming display. “They are the dead, translucent eyes of a fetus. It hangs, paralyzed and grotesque, in an opaque, curdling fluid. She fights down the bile that closes her throat and forces herself to look once more” (Heugten 249). Reading this part of the book made me feel disgusted, so I can only imagine the dismay of seeing a scene like that. Danyelle finds journals written by Marianne and they have descriptions of terrible abuses she inflicts on her children. As a mother herself, Danyelle can not imagine doing such harm to her child. I can’t relate in the aspects of being a mother, but I believe anyone would say that the acts of Marianna are sickening. Danyelle found horrifying evidence against the real murderer, which made me feel disgusted in the same way as her; Visualizing the setting of the courtroom and characters reactions was ; The dramatic ending of the book made my stomach drop and left so many questions. Saving Max is not the type of book I normally read, but I wanted to try something different and it was a book my dad previously had read. At the beginning of the book I found myself bored, but the pace quickly changed and I found myself on the edge
...story, this made me think that finally the serial killer is caught but that turned out to be nothing, still having the suspense of when the real serial killer will come in hand. But against my every envisagement, the serial killer came by himself to Duncan to get his lost diary back in the lost and found department. This made the chills run through me as he came at the time I didn't expected. This brought the sudden climax in the story making me even more anxious that even though Duncan has found the serial killer, how will he ever stop this killing machine. And finally at the end when the serial killer was chasing Duncan down on the subway tracks, they both get hit by the train creating more anxiety in my mind that how will Duncan ever survive this kind of blow. But in the ending he survives and the serial killer dies, thus creating a happy mental picture in the end.
To me, the challenging part of the book was reading a book on a topic that I do not know much about. I am starting to become familiar with the legal system, however I am nowhere near that of a lawyer. This is why I stumbled at times on some of the legal lingo that the book contained. In addition to that, I did find myself with a better understanding of our legal system. I felt like I was along for the ride on the whole legal process. Also, I would like to note that I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on the autopsy because I thought it was very interesting how they performed those procedures in that time period. I loved the detail that the author went into when describing how it all took place.
In class I read the first few pages and was immediately pulled into the book by the letter sent to Max’s mom and dad. It was a giant hook that reeled me right in. I can put myself right into Max’s shoes as a student going to school in Rochester. Well I mean kinda… now we can just text our parents.
The ending of the novel was inspiring. The author suggests the reader to look into great novels, and even supplies a list of novels a personally suggests. He ended with a very ...
Readers are able to connect with the notion of everlasting relationship between a mother and child. She tries to bring light to a dark situation. Mandy recalls old memories to her mother and makes her mother remember the goodness in her that appears to cleanse away the darkness from her allowing her to be set free. Jane Yolen makes it clear to readers that love overpowers fear that was provoked by the undead mother.
While everyone around her, and the world for that matter, believed she should fry for the murder of her children, she herself didn’t fully understand what was right and what was wrong. Andrea was led to believe, by Woroniecki, that her children, “would perish in the fires of hell”. ALL of this was when Woroniecki sent her a newsletter that called modern mothers “jezebels” and expressed concern for their “disobedient” children. She believed that if she killed them when they were young that God would have mercy on their souls.
... the ending of the book seemed too abrupt to me, and could be improved by making that a little smoother. It seemed like he was rushing to finish the book toward the end of the book, and quickly wrapped up the story at the end, I think that could be improved, but still nicely written.
book I was greatly troubled by its ending. I can see why it is an excellent novel, but at
... is reminiscing about the fact that she messed up and it cost the boy’s life. The overall tone in the end of the novel is depressing as the governess’s actions and attitudes about current events tend to reflect the tone of the situation.
Overall, this was a great book because I finished it in two days. It was filled with suspense, action, valuable themes, and it made me feel a wide variety of emotions. The book explored the value of family, the corruption of government, and the fundamental question of “Should one follow the order if it’s immoral to one?”
Evaluation: I thought the book was very exciting and suspenseful like her other books. The book had very good detail and an interesting plot. I liked the twist when Juan and the girl’s father came upon Glenn walking down the road. I also liked how the author described the action in great detail. It made me feel like I was right there seeing it all happen firsthand. I don’t think that the author could’ve made this book any better than she did already.
...it up to each reader to draw their own conclusions and search their own feelings. At the false climax, the reader was surprised to learn that the quite, well-liked, polite, little convent girl was colored. Now the reader had to evaluate how the forces within their society might have driven such an innocent to commit suicide.
The theme developed in this book is so important. Even if the event that happens to you isn’t to the same extent as what happened to Melinda, it’s still so important to reach out and ask for help. I think that the events in this book could easily happen to someone and it is such a simple book to relate too. So many people go throughout their days thinking that they are alone and have no one to go too, but that’s so wrong and this book shows that there are some situations you don’t have to handle on your
... is the amount of concern they have for each other, while also putting into perspective the amount of time they had known each other. We all couldn’t accept how close they were from the first hundred, two hundred, or even 284 pages. Once we had set our eyes upon page 285 we see the moment of true sacrifice and friendship that Maddie had for Julie. Maddie did not have to think twice when pulling the trigger on Julie, she knew she was going to be ending her life in a much more peaceful and humane way. My thoughts were strictly on excitement and curiosity if they would all make it out okay, but that all changed with one page.
In the short story “ A Dead Woman’s Secret by Guy de Maupassant, the basic theme is devoted to family and private relationships. The main characters in the story are Marguerite (the daughter), the judge (the son), the priest, and the deceased mother. Marguerite is a nun and she is very religious. The dead woman’s son, the Judge, handled the law as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without pity. The story begins by telling the reader that the woman had died quietly, without pain. The author is very descriptive when explaining the woman’s appearance - “Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as though she had done it up ten minutes before dying. The whole pale countenance of the dead woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that one could feel what a sweet soul had lived in that body, what a quiet existence this old soul had led, how easy and pure the death of this parent had been” (1). The children had been kneeling by their mother’s bed for awhile just admiring her. The priest had stopped by to help the children pass by the next hours of great sadness, but the children decided that they wanted to be alone as they spend the last few hours with their mother. Within in the story, the author discusses the relationship between the children’s father and their mother. The father was said to make the mother most unhappy. Great