Anna's Locket

I am currently reading "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult. In this book the two parents, Brian and Sara have three kids. The one they show the most love to is Kate, their first born, but also their sickest. Kate has acute promyelocytic lukemia, and was diagnosed with it at the age of two. Their second child to come was Jesse. He looks exactly like Sara, and was qiute loved until Kate was diagnosed. Sara and Brain were so focused on how to cure Kate that every conversation always led back to her. After a while there was no longer any talk of Jesse, so as a way to gain attention he became a "bad boy". Their third to come along was no accident. Anna, another word for blood vessels was concieved on purpose to be a donor for Kate because Jesse wasn't the right genetic match. She means more to her family than just a donor, though. While reading this book, I find myself looking for something wrong with everything they do.

I think the reason they made Anna is completely awful, and selfish, and because of this feeling I caught myself trying to find something wrong with this particular scene in the hospital. When Anna recieves a locket from Brian around the age of five because she just finished a bone marrow transplant that was given to Kate, I thought it meant nothing, and it was just a guilt gift. As I look back and think about it, it was a very nice gesture, but while reading it i didn't realize. It was like saying, "Sorry about creating you just for Kate, oh and sorry you had to donate your bone marrow, but it was for your dying sister so think about what would have happened if you had not donated it." I don't know them very well, so I know that it was not fair of me to judge them like that, but sometimes as a reader you need to in order to draw conclusions from the book. I think that the way the author portrays Sara and Brian, she was defenitely hoping for a controversy over the way people think of the parents. Anna is a very mixed character, she is struggling to keep her sister alive but also live wihtout  her.  To not have very much support from parents, that does not include a guilt gift, is not good parenting.

As much as I am critisizing them, I also need to critisize myself. Whenever I see a parent hit their kid I immediately jump to conclusions about what type of household they live in, or what household the parent grew up in. I also critisize what they are wearing, or what they can afford. As much as I understand that hitting their child is abuse and is horrible, I should really give them a chance because everyone deserves one. They may have something wrong in their life that  I wasn't aware of. Although none of these excuses is good enough to be treating their children that way, it is just not fair to jump to conclusions. After reading half of "My Sister's Keeper" I am really going to try to not jump to conclusions, and give people a chance.