MLA Doc

Sparks, Beatrice. Go ask Alice. New York: Simon Pulse, 2006. Print.

Compare and Contrast

The last book I read was called If These Walls Could Talk written by Jon Faulk. These two books were written on a life story through the main characters eyes. Jon Faulk tells the stories of Michigan Football's history. He was an equipment manager for more than 40 years, he is the only person to be there through the legend coaches of  Bo Schembechler and Brady Hoke. He tells his favorite stories first hand.  He walks you through the history Michigan football beyond the game itself. Go Ask Alice is written first hand of her experiences with drugs. They are different in the style of which it is written. If These Walls Could Talk was written as a biography and him looking back on his life and his experiences with Michigan Football. In Go Ask Alice, it is written as diary entries which is fresh first hand experiences, instead of remembrance of the events. She sat down and wrote about the events as they happened, as Jon had to look back on his life and write as he remembered it to be. 

Major Incidents

Three major events that happened in the book are her first time using drugs, getting sent to a mental hospital, and her physical death. Her first time using drugs, was at a party, unexpected,  and it she was hooked from that moment forward. She was at a party and the host came out with sodas for each person. Ten of the fourteen cups were laced with acid.  She got one of those laced cups. She explains that the feeling as "the most incredible experience of her life".  She then explains that she felt guilty, but she's glad he didn't go any longer without experiencing that feeling again. This is important because it began her fall into the darkness of drugs. When she was sent to the mental hospital it impacted the story because she was not mentally ill and not using drugs at the time.  A misunderstanding landed her there. She was babysitting for her mother's friend.  While babysitting the seven year old she ate some chocolate covered raisins.  These had been spiked by the teenager of the woman she was babysitting who was once "Alice's" friend.  She spiked them because she thought that since "Alice" was not using drugs anymore that she thought she was better than her. That caused her to trip out unsuspectingly.  It was not like the first time, but a bad trip. She said it felt like worms were crawling up and down the inside of her skin. Two days later she said that she could still feel the worms crawling on her skin, and this officially pushed her over the edge.  She promised no matter what happened, she would stop. Lastly, her death was the most important part of this book. Without her death, we don't have a story too be talking about right now. Her death is believed to be another set up because she had gotten out of the hospital and was sober.  She said that she did not want to put herself in a position to be placed back there because it was the worst experience of her life.   Yet; a couple of months later she turned up on the side of the road.

Shortcomings

I feel the shortcomings of this book is the dialect of which it is written. The dialect leads to me to have minor doubt in the truth of the story. If you were to read an average teenage girl's diary you would find opinions on school, boys, other girls, etc... During this book her diary entries are freakishly on topic the whole time. The book, rarely goes off on a discussion outside of drugs. How can it be possible that a teenage girl doesn't have a crush or hates homework. It maybe that other topics were eliminated during the publication process.  However, I feel that had there been dialect relevant to her thoughts on things other than drugs it would be more true to life.

Praiseworthy

There is a couple of things that I find praiseworthy about this book.  One of which is the strength of the family that aloud for her story to be told to the world.  Second the books ability to demonstrate that in life we have decisions to make and when making decisions you have to think about others and the possibilities of danger. The strength that it takes to allow for millions of people to read about their daughter's death is above anything of a common family would ever have to experience and is truly praise worthy. The book also shows you about the weight of each decision you make. That brought attention to me because it opened my eyes to how I should think and judge my decisions before I choose to do something.

Main Idea

Theme of this book is the effects drugs can have on a person. The book indicates this theme  very early with the opening passage , that was a message from the publisher, thanking the family for allowing them to use her diary, so that no family would ever have to go through, the lost of someone due to drugs. Then is further expressed with the story of her life during the time she was using. Such as, she talks about how her thought process was, which was when can I get high, on what, and how soon. Then when she got her "fix" for a lack of a better term, she just wanted to know when she could get this feeling again.

Mood

The mood that is expressed throughout this book is sadness and despair. At times there was extreme happiness and joy. The presumption that "Alice" dies in the end prevents  you from achieving a positive feeling. However, knowing the ending defiantly provides a distinctive mood, which was sad. "Hell' I'm shaking on the inside more than I am on the outside. What a bastard life it is with out drugs." As she fell into the dark hole that drugs can put you in, you could feel the regret in every decision that she made. When she chose to use acid for the second time, she expresses, how it mad her feel like a low life, who was going to be living on the street when she gets older. She stated; "For the last two days I've been trying to convince myself that using LSD makes me a "dope addict" and all other kinds of low-life, unclean people".

Element

The mot important element that moved me the most were the events. The events in this book weren't just casual events that happened.  It was a moving event each time that kept you wanting too know what she did next and the knowledge of  how she turned out. Each event brought a strong message with that created emotions of fear, sadness and hope.  Events like her running away and upon her return her family rushed too her with open arms and had no resentment for her decisions. That moved me, in fact I hate to admit it, but it broke me down.

Type of person

Based on my reading of this book, my opinion of the type of person "Alice" was a nice, caring, intelligent, young women  who fell into the wrong crowd because she had a good time at a party when someone slipped her some acid without her knowing. I can tell the she cares about people because when she runs away for the first time, the girl she left with is struggling to get by, and she uses the money that she was saving to help her out. She volunteered her time to help her grandmother after she moved into her family home.  Her grandmother was ill and she wanted to help her along with it providing a distraction from her thoughts of continuing to use drugs.

Author's Purpose

There is one main purpose to Go Ask Alice, and that is to inform. The Author is a teenager who was trapped in the drug world.  The story  is now used to inform teenagers/people about the dangers of drugs  and how they can take over your body and mind. It was not the original purpose of the book, because obviously it was her diary and she did not plan on a publication that would become  an example of true life examples of what can happen with the use of drugs.  In the Epilogue it states: Was it an accidental overdose? A premeditated overdose? No one knows and in some ways that question isn't important.  What be of concern is that she died, and that she was only one of thousands of drug deaths that year.

"Life As We Knew It"

Evaluation

The last week or so, as I class we were reading Life As We Knew It by Susan Pfeffer. The Plot of the book was basically a meteor strikes the moon and causes it too orbit closer to the earth. This causes several disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In the story you follow Miranda and her family as the struggle to survive the series of disasters. 

Life As We Knew It, I would not recommend this book to anyone, ever! I found this book to extremely boring, and I dreaded reading it. I based my judgement on 1. The concept, although it was realistic, I didn't like it. The concept seemed dragged out and boring to me. I am not a Science person, which could lead to why I thought the plot was boring, but all I know is that I hated it.Susan Pfeffer really did pick a concept that could happen, but she couldn't have thought of a more boring one. 2. The Beginning, the beginning to me is the most important part of the book. I give the first 5 to 6 chapters to catch my attention, or I pass an opinion that it sucks and the rest of the book just seems dull and boring. Other bloggers do tend to agree, such as Jeremy Vettrus, he said " I feel like the beginning of the book started off very slow and boring." although he disagrees and he enjoyed the book he feels the beginning wasn't good. and my third and last criteria on judging this book is development of characters, I feel like she developed the character of Miranda because it was her journal, but she didn't give much information on the others, and I would have liked to learn about all the characters. Learning about all the characters allows me too make judgement and bonds with them and grow to like their character. "Mom is more worried about Mrs. Nesbitt than she is about us." (page 105)This is an example of her telling us her opinions of how they thought and now how they personally actually made decisions. I guess its just my feeling of being able to choose which character to like or dislike. 

Others who say they like it may say that the plot was easy to read, because it could happen. They are wrong because, it wasn't easy to read. Every time I opened the book I thought to myself here we go again. If this book wasn't assigned and it was my copy of the book, it would have been put up in flames!! This book made me go to sleep on 2 occasions, I was reading it in bed, and I just passed out mid read, and I didn't even care because it got me away from the book, and thats all I wanted to do. So there's my opinion on this book, I wouldn't read this by choice if it was forced upon me.

Greatest Book of All Time

Lady and Gentlemen I have made my decision on what book I will be reading... The book I chose is "Go Ask Alice". The reason I choose this book was because it struck me as an interesting read, and it applies to what teenagers all over go through, while trying to concur the crazy thing called High School.

The Best Thing I learned last semester was.......

The Best Thing I learned from last sememster was my work ethic was lazy and uncaring. Now I realize that if I put my full complete effort in that I can succed at AP Language, and amoung other things, such as the rest of my subjects, so I am very thankful of Mr. Jackson for helping me with my effort. This is a skill that I needed as a student.