The sixth book I have chosen to read is “Go Ask Alice” by Anonymous. This book, without a named author, is written as a journal or diary, or combination thereof, about the life, thoughts, and emotions of a teenage (15 year old) girl. The girl, our main character, has a name unknown, although the name “Alice” refers to another character in the novel, Alice is also sometimes used to refer to the main character mostly for convenience. However the names, dates, and places have been changed in order to protect the anonymity of related people. These diary entries are the difficult and often painful struggles of someone using and abusing drugs. Our main character is caught in a world engulfed in teenage emotions, issues, sexual situations and conflicts as well as the diary’s main focus drugs. We learn about her, the main character, as well as her aspirations for her life. As she explores the ins and outs of the teenage world, her exploration into drugs becomes more than experimentation and transforms into addiction. We see her begin the diary or novel, as some refer to it (and I believe it is as well), with typical or average teenage problems and thoughts such as her body image, the kids at school or her popularity, as well as the ever problematic boys. She faces changes in her life with a move to a new town, bringing more problems to her social and personal life. In trying to get away from this unhappy new life, she returns to her old town for the summer. This move is what sparks a chain of events that will lead to the use and ultimate abuse of drugs. She attends a party where she accidentally drinks coke (as in Cola) with LSD in it. She finds this one experience so amazing that she extends her experimentation to other drugs such as weed/pot among others and ventures into sexual experimentations.
As our main character continues and increases drug use, the writing styles change and the language moves into a more detailed perspective. The drug use is only enhanced and the effects as well as need, confirmed when she finds acceptance with a drug abusing crowd. Through dating a drug dealer and running away she experiences more tragedy and heartache in her life, with the core of the problem still being drugs and their control over her. She returns home only to find an ongoing challenge with society and staying away from drugs. Through more experiences with drugs, of her own doing and without her knowledge of, she finds herself in the lowest point of her life. Hitting rock bottom, she resolves to get her life on track. Without telling the more cruel pieces of the novel as well as the ending, this compilation of journal/diary entries is a roller coaster of experiences with not only drugs but life. Her choices lead her to where she was in life as well as what she experienced. This novel illustrates the choices we must make in life as well as the choices we choose to make. In addition, the novel shows how our choices will affect us momentarily and perpetually.
This book is a great illustration of writing style, voice, and even various literary techniques. Using the book specifically for these purposes could prove helpful. But with all of these positive things the book has to offer, it is still a very dark and some even venture to say “realistic” view of the teenage drug world. Although I believe this book could have many positive effects with students, I would not teach this particular text in the classroom because of the level of controversy. It might work well if I was to pull pieces, but that would inherently take away from the power of the overall text. Engorged with sex, drugs, drug abuse, language, and painful scenarios, this book has the potential to be very disturbing and scary to some. I do believe that girls will relate to the book more so than boys because of the situations both sexual and non sexual that the character continues to find herself immersed in. I would recommend this book for, not necessarily an older student but rather, a mature student capable of handling the material, seeing the positive and negative the novel has to offer.
I really liked this book because I feel it gives a voice to the difficult issues teenagers face but all too often cannot express. The expression in this book is what I believe makes it so powerful. The language itself whether seeming childish or not, is important to the feeling evoked by the book. I think this book opens the eyes of the reader to problems that are seen everyday yet never seen at all. I wonder if I wonder how many of my future students will face these problems, if not all of them, and how I can help alleviate or educate on these issues. I want to read more books that have these particular issues in them not only to gather a better literary knowledge of these issues but to be able to give my students answers to some questions they may have that I cannot always answer. I hope to help even when I don’t know how to help.
Another important aspect of this book to note is the "author". The listed editor of the book is rumored to be the author, Beatrice Sparks. In many interviews she identified herself as the books editor, however when researching her background, conflicting pieces arise. Sparks had an extensive background in working with troubled children and due to these experiences, she was thought to have, used these to compile into one character in one novel. She supposedly used a real diary from one of her patients, and then destroyed pieces of it after publication while the other pieces are locked up with the publisher. All of these things seem quite odd together, along with Sparks being the sole copyright holder, according to the U.S Copyright Office, which is usually the author who holds that right.
No comments:
Post a Comment