Q3 Outside Reading Week 4 Post B

Although I was able to talk about it a little in my Post A, I'd like to expand on an important quote that I found: "I tell myself that I've invited him along to add to the thrill--one more person who knows only makes it more exciting. But it's really because there are some nights when you just want to know there's someone else besides you in this wide world"(244). Like I said before, this quote said by Jesse, really strikes a chord. It also brings into retrospect, an important theme in this book. It deals with a special need all humans must have, and I'm not talking about water or food or shelter. I'm talking about love, and the lack of unconditional love in My Sister's Keeper. There are many different types of love used and reserved for different things. There's love for your family, love for your belongings, love for your hobbies, love for your significant other, and love for your friends, etc. 3 out of 5 of the types of love I listed should be unconditional, but everyone knows they really aren't sometimes. Unconditional love means that you love that person(or thing or whatever it is) for them. You don't care about anything else, whether they have money, whether they're smart, whether they're tall or short or fat or skinny or beautiful or ugly. None of that matters.

In the Fitzgerald family, unconditional love is mastered by one person: Anna. A mother's love is supposed to be unconditional, but Sara's doesn't seem that way. For Kate, it is...or maybe it's out of pity? We don't truly know though I believe for Kate, Sara's love is unconditional. But that doesn't seem to apply to Anna, at least not much. For the most part, as long as Anna remains a donor for Kate, Sara won't be too angry at her, but when she slapped that law suit on her parents, Sara became furious. She didn't even stop and think about what Anna did, something that Brian actually managed to do. But neither of them show much affection towards Jesse, who, possibly more than anyone else in this book, needs that love and care in order to survive. He's gone so long without it that he himself won't open up to anyone, but Anna, who loves him too, Dan, who just happens to be a convenience, and Julia, only because he thinks she's attractive. It is because of Jesse that I say only one member of this family has mastered unconditional love. Anna loves both her parents, probably something that causes her to vacillate so much with the lawsuit. She wants to go through with it, but because of her fear of disappointing her mother, and even her love for her mother and Kate, she doesn't really want them to know. Around her family, Anna pretends there is no lawsuit, but there actually is. It's hard for Anna to do this to the people she loves the most, but like Julia said, either Anna is going to lose her sister or she's going to lose herself.

It is because of the necessity for love and attention that makes people they way they are in My Sister's Keeper. It's hard to relate this to Brian and Sara, but their kids turned out the way they did because of how much attention each one got. Sure Brian and Sara showered them with guilt gifts, but that's not enough. They never actually spent any time with Jesse after Kate's diagnosis, which is probably why he's so messed up. Jesse merely just exists in this world and nobody sees him. Anna isn't doing this because she wants attention, but because she wants control of her body. It is because of her love for her family that she seems so indecisive at times, and even possibly fear as well. And Kate, despite having APL, has turned out relatively fine. Her parents, at least Sara, spends 24/7 worrying about Kate, so the oldest daughter gets all the attention and love she could ever have.

With families that have multiple children, there is always a favorite. Even now I know this. Parents aren't supposed to have favorites, and it isn't really that evident, but if you want to know how Jesse or Anna or Kate feels, pretend you are the favorite in your family and multiply that by about 10 times and that's how Kate feels, probably. Do the same for Jesse, only with the least liked. And Anna literally is right in between. When she does what she can for Kate, she is honored like a Goddess. When she doesn't, she gets tossed aside like a piece of garbage, like Jesse. I know it's not fair, any of it: the fact that Kate has APL, that Sara and Brian have to balance keeping their family together, that Jesse gets ignored, and that Anna has no control over her own life, but sometimes you need to just take a step aside and think things over, think things through. You might think you are doing the right thing for everyone, but in reality, you are harming a lot more people than you are helping.