Reading Reflection #3

Go Ask Alice

Anonymous

Pages 113-213 (end)

After finishing this book, I am left with many comments, predictions and text connections.

The first comment I had was about Alice’s behavior. At one point in the book, Alice is giving people sexual favors for drugs in return. She doesn’t know what day or month or year it even is because of being off and on so many drugs and blacking out. She also says, “So maybe I am pregnant. So what.” All of these things are examples of some of the worst outcomes of drugs. Hardcore drugs can open up the door for people to take advantage of you. You get so addicted that you would do anything to get your hands on some more. It makes you careless of things that really do matter and could possibly change your life. This is because all you start to care about is where you’re getting your drugs next and when your next high will be. Another very bad and serious sign that you see from Alice is when she says two boys had died from overdoses the night before and she wished she had been one of them. Nobody should want or feel the need to leave this world, especially not at fifteen years old. This shows that she has many regrets, and she’s not very stable. After these things happen while Alice has run away from her house, she finally talks to her family and goes back. When she’s back it seems as if nothing has happened. She stops using and becomes quite grounded. She rereads what she had written about the past few weeks and she is very overwhelmed by who she was when she was on drugs. She says, “Someone evil and foul and degenerate wrote in my book, took over my life.” This just emphasizes how bad some drugs out there are. They were able to take over a stable, clean, fifteen year old girl’s life, so I’m sure they can take over anyone else’s as well. One bit of writing that caught my attention was when Alice describes what she thought she remembered when she was drugged with acid. She describes in incredible detail about her hallucinations of worms and maggots completely disintegrating dead bodies and even her body. An example of this is, “His two eye sockets were teeming with white soft-bodied, creeping animals which were burrowing in and out of his flesh and which were phosphorescent and swirled into one another.” I think the author does this part in such detail so that readers understand different drugs and the risks and dangers of them.

As I finished reading Go Ask Alice, I found quite a few quotes that interested me and most are text to self connections. The first quote I found that caught my attention was, “Perhaps it was even right for me to go through all this suffering so that I could be more understanding and tolerant of the rest of humanity.” This quote could be a text to self connection because I agree with the concept of having to go through pain sometimes to gain knowledge and experience. Alice is right that it gives you an understanding maybe about what other people are through if you go through tough times yourself. Another quote that is also a text to self connection is, “Now that I have a goal I feel a lot stronger myself.” I can connect because I think creating goals is a more fun and rewarding way of getting things done. For example making a list of goals and finishing them by crossing them off the list. It makes you feel proud and complete. It’s almost the idea of gammification where you feel that you get a certain amount of points for each goal you complete. There’s a really big idea behind that sort of thing lately within apps and such so I think that it could be considered a text to world connection as well. A more personal text to self connection I found was when Alice explains that her father complimented her on how he could see her being a great wife someday. She explains how she got tears in her eyes, and I can totally relate to the feeling of being so surprised and emotional when parents know exactly what to say and when to say it.

In this book there is an epilogue, and I never would’ve known what that meant, but now I learned that it was a ‘concluding part added to a literary work’. The epilogue in this novel is quite intense. The book ends off where Alice is a whole new person and she’s in the best place possible after going through such tragic times. The epilogue explains that Alice died three weeks after completing her first diary. It is a sad ending, but I think it ties the message of the story together perfectly. If you’re going to warn others about drugs, why not end it big and dramatic? It gets the point across and being the last thing said in the novel, it leaves the impact in the readers’ minds.

There are many other connections and comments that I could have picked out about the last part of this book. Overall, I think it was a bit easy for grade 12 although a good, informative, and thorough read. I might recommend this to someone, but it isn’t necessary to read. Can’t wait to start a new book!