Monthly Archives: June 2013

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell

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The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

This is a poem about war and more specifically about the airmen who manned the ball turrets during World War II. Thematically, this is also a poem about loss, fear, death and maternal love.

When I read this poem, I was immediately taken back to an episode from the 80s TV series Amazing Stories, in which a young soldier (who was also an artist) was a ball turret gunner and his plane got hit by enemy fire and he got trapped inside the ball. Worse yet, the landing gear on the plane malfunctioned, meaning that if the plane were to land he’d be crushed to death. In the story, the soldier, who was just a teenager, had to quickly draw a cartoon of his plane with landing gear intact and believe that it could come to life and save him which it inevitably did.

I loved that story and it was so powerful that it stayed with me all these years, but it was just a story. In reality, this was a hellish position to be in. The soldier given the responsibility of ball turret gunner had to be physically small enough to fit into such a cramped, confined space so typically they were the smallest and often the youngest soldiers. According to Wikipedia, “The Sperry ball turret was very small in order to reduce drag, and was typically operated by the shortest man of the crew. To enter the turret, the turret was moved until the guns were pointed straight down. The gunner placed his feet in the heel rests and then crouched down into a fetal position.” If that wasn’t bad enough, the gunner had to do this alone and with his eyes open.

In The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, poet Randall Jarrell helps us imagine what it must have been like for these soldiers and their mothers, as well.

First off Jarrell tells this in first person and that offers an unparalleled personal perspective, one which brings the reader as close as possible to the POV of the gunner himself. Next, he uses imagery to show what these men might have been thinking and feeling.

“From my Mother’s sleep I fell into the State” is such a powerful opening line. From the POV of the soldier, we learn what a nightmare, too, this must have been for his mother to have had to send her boy to war, knowing she may never see him again. Then, we picture the soldier inside the ball of the plane “hunched in its belly” in the fetal position, much like a fetus in a mother’s womb. This image makes us think of a baby and reinforces our connection to his mother and how she must feel and how he feels as he thinks of her.

As we move through the poem, Jarrell offers another image, that of “wet froze fur.” While some readers may picture tortured animals, like kittens or puppies suffering outside during winter, this image, I believe, is meant to signify the physical conditions and the fear and panic of the young airman as he both sweats and freezes in his military issued B-1 bomber jacket. These jackets were leather and fur lined. At altitude, the soldier would have been freezing inside this unheated compartment but the fear of death and the anxiety over what he must do was also making him sweat. Finally, and perhaps the most gruesome image is that of the soldier dying and having to be “washed out of the turret with a hose.” The idea of this young man dying in battle and having his body power washed away is tragic and horrifying. The idea that he is well aware of this possible fate but cannot escape it is even harder to swallow. With the image of a fetus in its mother’s belly, the poet may or may not have been also making a statement about abortion here.

The poem itself uses a combination of poetic devices successfully. Through partial and full rhyme (froze/hose, black/flak) along with alliteration, consonance and assonance the poet is able to create a natural cadence for his poem. The poet also uses cacophony, or the repetition of unpleasant sounds, to tell the story. By repeating the “fr” and “er” sounds (fur, froze, fighters, nightmare, earth, turret) the poet reminds us of the feelings of being cold and scared—the sound of the combined letters even makes a sort of trembling, shivering sound that successfully reinforces the poet’s message and the overall feeling of the poem itself and, in some readers, may even cause a physical reaction. The poem itself is an example of allusion since it tells the first person story of a soldier who died in WWII and in an exceptionally creative way the poet uses personification by having a dead man tell his own story. Perhaps the most spectacular part of this poem though is its voice.

I really enjoyed this poem. Though brief, it was quite powerful and it really got me thinking of the horrors and tragedies of war. It’s so hard to imagine the many fears and struggles of a soldier but this poem helped put all of that into perspective by offering a personal first person account of one airman, a ball turret gunner, who experienced war and didn’t survive, as well as the added perspective of his mother. It’s amazing to me how much thought and feeling this poet was able to inspire in me through such a brief poem.

Work Cited:

McClatchy, J. D. The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry. New York. Vintage. 2003.

Wikipedia. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_turret 2013.

O North West! (an ode)

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O North West!
I wonder if this was just the result
of a parental coin flip as in “Tails,
we go South.”

O North West!
Personally I would have gone with Key
For it begins with a K after all
Or maybe Summers Eve after daddy
Or is that too douchey even for him?
I doubt it.

O North West!
What a shame! West is such a strong last name
No mid initial? What were they thinking?
It’s not as if they couldn’t afford one.
Bynorth would’ve been my choice but perhaps
It’s too classy, cliché or too close to
Beyonce.

O North West!
Do they think
You’re just another spot on a compass
Over there. That way. An almost left turn?
I guess it could be worse. You could have been
an Apple.

O North West!
Will your moniker become its own brand?
A diaper line for big bootied babies?
Or maybe
Your own reality show’s in the works
Sweetie, surely Grannie’s got you covered.
She conceived the marketing strategy
long before the day you were thought to be.
Believe me.

O North West!
Maybe someday you can just slip away
into exclusivity with the rest
of the Wests
If that’s what you want, that is, instead of
Fulfilling your family’s prophecy
Trading your soul for ratings is fine while
you’re alive
But remember we only live once, oh
little one.

O North West!
Will you be daddy’s girl? His shining star?
Or just another dash in mommy’s world?
Grow up to be whatever you want but
Please oh please, pretty please, just promise me
no sex tape.

O North West!
Someday you may take your spouse’s last name.
Will you marry a Star or a Pole or
Hyphenate North West dash whatever? Oh
there’s that inescapable dash again,
you poor thing.

O North West!
A rose is still a rose by any name
So Kardashian heir apparent(ly)
There’s still hope
for you to become the best North West who
ever was.

O North West!
The direction you choose is up to you
It’s your life.
To let your name predict your destiny,
look to the sky, chin up, hold your head high.
You’ll go far
little star.

But if all else fails, go South East instead.

Autumn Alarm Clock (poem)

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Autumn Alarm Clock

Mother tapped on my window this morning

Seizing my skin with her breeze and my mind

With the click-clack of leaves falling from trees

Still I squeezed my pillow in denial

My eyes holding on tightly to slumber

And pressing hard on my subconscious snooze

My loving mother found another way

She sent the rain to trickle and tickle

Sweetly on my subconscious mind with its

Dripdropdrip Dripdropdrip

Autumn sensations replaced with those of

Coffee and cream and delicious caffeine

Suddenly I’m awake.

Fun with Images

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1. He was as happy as a bag of wet cats
2. She plopped down onto the plastic couch with the thump of a ripe melon
3. Cannibalistic carnivores playing Russian Roulette in an herb garden
4. A psycho clown smiling while dancing barefoot on the sun
5. The shark-sharp teeth of a puppy nipping at your ankle
6. Crabs in a bucket climbing, clawing, falling on top of one another
7. Demons laughing at you from the foot of your bed
8. We sat and waited patiently for the locusts to come
9. Her ego makes mine look like a speck of cracked black pepper in a sarcastic sea of salt.
10. The determined beagle sniffed and sniffed searching the streets for a chicken bone
11. A blood thirsty black cat with hair up hissing wickedly at the witch of the west
12. Then I choked on a thick dark cloud of Aqua Net
13. As she sucked the nectar from the mango’s core its juice dripped up to her elbow
14. Swollen and pursed to burst like a gangrenous gallbladder
15. Alley cats screaming profanities under the starry night sky
16. Sticky fingers smashing overripe bananas in a cereal bowl
17. Pimply adolescent faces hormonally bonded by braces
18. The lunch lady glumped the decomposed paste onto the plate and said, “Eat up.”
19. Is that a pubic hair stuck to the tip of your tongue?
20. Red rose petals painted on a child’s chubby pink cheek
21. She sipped champagne through a swirly Minnie Mouse straw
22. Fancy frozen ponies galloping up and down frolicking round and round forever forward
23. One lonesome wish floating across a sea of weeds all waiting to come true
24. Inhaling the last lush lavender breeze of springtime
25. The final child’s death blow caused candy canes to rain from the sky
26. Two sisters laughing while stirring anxiously making melted Neapolitan soup

Subject Matter and Themes in Poetry

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Subject Matter and Themes: Workshop and On Turning Ten by Billy Collins

When it comes to poetry, I sometimes get confused. This week I found myself scratching my head again as I read about subject matter and themes, and I thought: “Is there a difference?”

Ah, of course there is—though there was a time when I tangled the two. I apparently have a similar issue with similes/metaphors and with alliteration/consonance. In fact, I think I might suffer from a sort of poetic dyslexia because I get so many of the terms turned around.

To keep subject matter and theme straight, I continuously referred back to this week’s lecture which states: “The subject matter is what the poem is about. The theme is better represented as reoccurring ideas that surface and resurface in a poem. I could very well write a poem about auto repair while focusing on themes of aging and mortality, resilience, etc.”

I originally chose Workshop by Billy Collins for this exercise because I connected as a writer for obvious reasons with the subject matter (or was it the themes? Nah, it was definitely the subject matter). But my mind kept returning to On Turning Ten so I’ve decided to discuss both. Of course, if I get either one right, it’ll be a miracle.

First, I love the fact that these two poems show up back-to-back in the book because they feel connected, like two separate glances at one poet’s life. While it’s easy to assume but hard to say with certainty that Collins is being self-reflective with either or simply speaking about poets in general (or a bit of both perhaps), they have similar themes and subject matters. In fact, Workshop could very well be the future perspective of the young poet in On Turning Ten.

Workshop is such a neat poem. On the surface the subject matter feels light and seems to be simply about work shopping a poem but as we dig deeper we see that the poem being work shopped feels alive. Collins uses personification and imagery (like “the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face” and “maybe that’s just what it wants to do” and even “words are food thrown down on the ground for other words to eat”) to show us the poet’s intense connection to his own work as if it is representative of the writer himself— like he is the poem. The image of the hard working mouse reflects the pain and effort the poet put into his piece. Themes that scream out to me include creativity, pain (mostly regarding the critique process), self-reflection and even death. “There’s something about death going on here” feels highlighted in the poem, as though the poet had an epiphany that having his poem torn apart in workshop feels like death itself.

On Turning Ten is a sort of coming of age poem about a young boy who realizes he’s getting too old for childish things, like “imaginary friends.” He reflects on and says goodbye to his childhood as he looks toward the future. There is a profound sadness to the poem as though the young poet doesn’t actually want to say goodbye to his imagination but feels he must. “The whole idea of it” makes him feel like “he’s coming down with something” “a kind of measles of the spirit.” The image of this boy “walking through the universe in his sneakers” looking back at his “youth” or more accurately at his younger self, since he’s only turning ten, and how he played make believe is precious. He says: “It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I would shine.” Here the poem captures the essence of youthful abandon and fearlessness. But the poem ends with the subject realizing his own mortality: “But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed.”

Death is a major recurring theme in this section of Collins’ book and, even the title, The Art of Drowning, alludes to it. Each poem addresses death from a unique angle. For example, Days dances with the idea that life is a gift and suggests we live each as though it’s our last. Dancing Toward Bethlehem discusses “final minutes” and we see “the orchestra sliding into the sea.”

In On Turning Ten Collins takes what by all accounts should be a positive milestone in a young person’s life but grooms it with negativity as if ten is the beginning of the end, while Workshop addresses the theme of death less literally. Through the image of the cemetery and the line about death in the middle of the poem, Collins practically shouts, “Hey, this poem is also about death!” Workshop isn’t about physical death or realizing one’s own mortality like On Turning Ten but rather it’s the emotional death we sometimes feel when we’re being criticized or misunderstood.

Death is also a common theme with the other poets we covered this week. For example, in I Go Back to May 1937 Sharon Olds uses straightforward language (“you are going to want to die”) and dark imagery (“plates of blood” and “wrought iron gate”) to speak of ghosts and memories of departed loved ones. In addition to death, this week’s other common themes include looking inward, time (it passing, standing still, slipping away), loss, endings, love, regret and creativity.

Writing and poetry itself were common subject matters in this week’s poems. While Workshop discusses a poem being work shopped and On Turning Ten speaks of a young poet growing up, in Canada, the subject of the poem speaks of various Canadian writers as he/she “writes this in a wooden canoe” and Osso Buco says a “full stomach” is “something you don’t hear about much in poetry” and Budapest speaks of the “pen moving along the page.”

It was nice to read so many poems using “writing” as subject to tackle so many different themes.

Works Cited:

Bishop, Wendy. Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem: A Guide to Writing Poetry. New York. Longman. 2000.

Collins, Billy. Sailing Along Around the Room. New York. Random House. 2001.

McClatchy, J. D. The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry. New York. Vintage. 2003.

My First Attempt at Ars Poetica

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Inspiration all around
Raining down from up above
Words saturating my flesh
Stanzas seeping through my skin

My eyes see all her beauty
My ears teased by her sweet rhyme
The universe controls me
This is her poem, not mine

Revelations fill my mouth
I swallow every drop
Gorge myself on metaphors
The first draft writes itself

I exhale. I am happy.
I feel nurtured. I feel love.
But when I pause to read it
All I think is “what the fuck?”

Suddenly my eyes spy every error
My nerve endings feel each flaw
Stomach aches in imperfection
Now I need to fix them all

Revisions race right through me
Broken cadence destroys my soul
Vile verses course through my veins
Evil images explode

My organs all malfunction
Now I’m sweating rhythmically
My heart beats broken rhythms
Brain obsesses. I can’t breathe.

I need to fix this poem.
If I fail I know I’ll die.
Reconsidering verses
And my calling in life, too

Oh onomatopoeia!

My mind is a thesaurus
Poisoned by hyperbole
One too many similes
All this grotesque imagery

I cry for each cut stanza
I mourn all my dying words
As I read each one out loud
The whole poem sounds absurd

But then my muse takes over
It was right there all along
Inspiration’s returning
As I churn out my new song

Poetic epiphany!
God has not forsaken me
Words start flowing magically
And now I’m born again.

Go Ask Alice (a personal PS)

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I first read Go Ask Alice at age 12 and it was so powerful that it’s stayed with me. It was one of my favorite books back then and reading it again at 37, it was still powerful but it was also nostalgic. I remember once I read it back then wanting all of my friends to read it, too. It felt important. And honestly I still believe every teen girl should read it. What an awesome book.

I love to write in the margins as I read. I fully intend to share this book someday with my daughter so this time I wrote notes to her in the margins. Every time “Alice” wished she had someone to talk to, I wrote a little note reminding my daughter that she can always talk to me. And each time “Alice” failed and felt badly about herself, I wrote a note telling my daughter that I will always love her no matter what.

Go Ask Alice: An awesome YA novel (if you ask me)

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Go Ask Alice is the “diary” of an “anonymous” teenage girl whose life, documented from age 15 to 17, is dominated by her downward spiral into drug addiction. Published in 1971, this realistic, young adult problem novel remains one of the most popular YA books of all time.

Although the book was originally marketed as the true diary of an actual teenage girl, it has since been revealed to be a work of fiction. It opens: Go Ask Alice is based on the actual diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user. It is not a definitive statement on the middle-class, teenage drug world. It does not offer any solutions. It is, however, a highly personal and specific chronicle. As such, we hope it will provide insights into the increasingly complicated world in which we live. Names, dates, places and certain events have been changed in accordance with the wishes of those concerned. ~ The Editors

Like many teen girls, the protagonist confides her inner most thoughts and secrets to her diary. In terms of craft, since the story is written in first person and in diary form, “Alice” is presented to us as her life unfolds naturally, with observations both dramatic and insignificant. She speaks directly to the reader and her relaxed, sometimes exaggerated, adolescent tone makes her experiences, while at times foreign to many readers, seem authentic, truthful and realistic.

The protagonist’s language plays a big part in her authenticity. It stayed consistently teen-like from the very first page when she writes: “I thought I’d literally and completely die with happiness” all the way to her final entry two years later when she writes: “Diaries are great when you’re young. In fact, you’ve saved my sanity a hundred, thousand, million times.”

The protagonist’s name is never actually revealed in the book. According to Wikipedia, it is believed that Go Ask Alice got its name from the 1967 Jefferson Airplane song White Rabbit which includes the lyrics: “Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall.” Grace Slick, one of the band’s lead singers, wrote the song after noticing possible drug references in Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (AKA: Alice in Wonderland), first published in 1865. The connection is spelled out for us on page 36 of Go Ask Alice, when in Alice’s July 14th entry, she writes: “I feel like Alice in Wonderland. Maybe Lewis G. Carroll was on drugs, too.”

Though the byline says “Anonymous,” the US Copyright Office lists Beatrice Sparks as the sole author, although her name is found nowhere on the book itself. According to Wikipedia, “Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) was an American therapist and Mormon youth counselor who was known for producing books purporting to be the ‘real diaries’ of troubled teenagers.”

In Wild Ink: How to Write Fiction for Young Adults, Victoria Handley identifies and defines the following common characteristics of YA literature: Age of Protagonist, Coming of Age, Passion, Honesty, Independence, Wild Exploration and Breakdown/Breakthrough. There is no question that Go Ask Alice contains each of these qualities, or that the story itself as well as its messages are clearly driven by Alice’s wild exploration and her breakdowns/breakthroughs.

The protagonist predominantly explores the world of drugs and through a string of breakdowns the reader is able to see the damage the drugs are doing to her mentally and physically. On page 163, after she vowed again to never touch drugs, while babysitting Alice eats some chocolate covered peanuts which we learn later were laced with acid. After going into a fit of rage, she is locked in a closet where she self-mutilates. She is hospitalized and later institutionalized. She writes: “The whole ends of my fingers have been torn off and two nails have been pulled out completely and the others torn down almost in half.” In addition to the physical breakdown, she is experiencing a mental breakdown, as well: “The worms are eating away at my female parts first. They have almost entirely eaten away at my vagina and my breasts and now they are working their way to my mouth and throat. I wish the doctors and nurses would let my soul die, but they are still experimenting with trying to reunite the body and the spirit.”

Alice’s breakthroughs are few and far between but her intentions to stop doing drugs are made clear multiple times in the novel. Sadly, each time she succumbs to her addiction.

On page 14 of In Writing and Selling the YA Novel, K.L. Going writes: “Writing for teens isn’t easy. It’s a balancing act—weighing what’s relevant with what’s timeless—but if you can do this, you can succeed in any genre.”

Go Ask Alice was published in 1971 and some of references in the book suggest a timeline from 1968 until 1970, yet today’s teens are still reaching for it, reading it and talking to their friends about it. With well over a million copies in print, it has become a classic piece of YA literature. It addresses difficult themes and it successfully makes its points. This powerful realistic faux-diary of a teenager’s struggle with the seductive and often fatal world of drugs and addiction tells the truth about drugs in an authentic, never preachy voice. The book is influential and it challenges the conceptions of YA literature by tackling powerful young adult themes, like drug addiction and sex, without bothering to sugar coat consequences. Drugs and sex have always been and will always be hot topics for teens and will probably always be considered taboo topics by many adults. Through its no-holds-barred, realistic depiction of one teen’s journey into drug addiction and sex, Go Ask Alice has advanced the field of YA lit.

On page 531 of Literature for Adolescents—Pap or Protein? Frank G. Jennings writes: “Here are young people, trembling on the threshold of adulthood. They want to know what it is like to hope and fail, to suffer, to die, to love wastefully. They want to have spelled out some of the awful consequences of going against society’s grain. They want to dare greatly.”

I first read Go Ask Alice as an eighth grader attending a Catholic elementary school in inner city Philadelphia. My best friend Nicole talked it up and then finally lent me her copy when she was finished with it. I remember being anxious to get my hands on it. To me, it was exciting and scandalous, since the book was not available in our school’s library and I knew the content was pretty much off limits for someone my age. While my parents weren’t typically the types to censor my reading, I assumed they wouldn’t approve if they knew so I snuck around to read it.

On page 42 of Writing & Selling the YA Novel, Going writes: “W.H. Auden said, ‘Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.’”

I remember being blown away by this young girl’s diary, which at the time I truly believed to be real. I related to Alice’s desire to fit in and her issues with her body. Most teenage girls would. I was captivated by her firsthand account of how she first got introduced to drugs and sex and how both spiraled out of control until she was addicted to various drugs and having casual sex with complete strangers. Alice’s experiences fascinated and scared me.

When Alice is sober, she writes almost every day about her life and her goals but when she’s on drugs, there are large gaps between entries and many entries are undated. Alice goes from writing about normal teen girl things like friendships and boys to documenting in a broken matter-of-fact way her recollection of being raped and how good the drugs made her feel.

In addition to being a cautionary tale about the evils of drugs, Go Ask Alice is also a book about loneliness, depression, fitting in and finding one’s place in the world. As Alice’s family moved around, young Alice started at a new school in the middle of the year and she struggled to make and keep friends. Like many young adults, she felt insecure and struggled with her weight and appearance. She perceived her siblings to be more attractive and popular and because of this she believed her parents loved them more. She felt alone and like an outcast at school and at home. In multiple entries, Alice writes: “I wish I had someone to talk to.”

Whether or not teens can relate to Alice’s world and circumstances, most are able to relate to her mindset and her emotions. At twelve, I was curious about drugs and sex. While I hadn’t yet done either, some of my friends had and I was aware that I could if I’d wanted to. Living in the city, in a densely populated neighborhood, I certainly had access if I’d wanted to try either. But, unlike Alice, I knew I had people to talk to. I could talk to my parents—though like many teens in my situation, I didn’t always take advantage of that and more often than not I got my information from my friends. Still I knew I was loved and that my family was there for me if and when I needed them. But even with a good family and friends, there were still plenty of times when I felt alone, lonely and different, and when I struggled to fit in just like Alice. Every teen feels this way and some of the things that happened to Alice could happen to anyone.

This book made a huge impact on me as an adolescent. I remember how I felt when Alice’s life began to unravel and how scared I was for her when she ran away. I was so happy when her parents welcomed her back only to be devastated again when she wound up institutionalized. I believed her when she vowed to never touch drugs again in her final journal entry. And I cried when I read the epilogue and learned she died from an overdose three weeks later.

Because of its explicit drug and sex references, Go Ask Alice has been banned from many school libraries. According to Wikipedia: “The American Library Association listed Go Ask Alice as number 23 on its list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the 1990s. The book was number 8 on the most challenged list in 2001 and up to number 6 in 2003. The dispute over the book’s authorship does not seem to have played any role in these censorship battles.”

This is a book that has the ability to make a difference with young readers. Even though it was written in the 1960s and much of the language and plot reflects those times, the protagonist’s story is still relevant today.
Addiction, drugs, sex, rebellion and fitting in are timeless young adult topics. And while I understand some parents may not want their teens to read it because of its mature themes and language, teenagers are who need to read Go Ask Alice.

Twelve-year-old me read this book and was totally freaked out! I did not want to be like Alice. Reading it again at 37, the book still affected me. Sure, I’m an adult now and as such my perspective is entirely different. But I still cried for Alice. And now, I can look back over my life and see how her story influenced me. I definitely had Alice in the back of my mind when I encountered similar situations in my teen years to those she faced in the book, and I proceeded with caution. Seeing what happened to her positively influenced me to walk a different path.

Even though I believed the book to be a real diary written by a real girl back when I first read it, I’m not sure it would’ve been any less impactful had I known it had actually been written by an adult. Rereading the story as an adult I still found Alice’s voice authentic and even knowing what I know now, that the book was written by Beatrice Sparks, I still pictured a young girl in my head. The protagonist, whether or not she was based on a real person, still felt real to me and her thoughts and actions grabbed and kept my attention. On page 59 of Writing & Selling the YA Novel, Going writes: “Active characters are endlessly fascinating because we’re always wondering what they’ll do next. It’s easy to feel as though we know them well, and when a reader feels like they know a character in the same way they know a real person, they’ll invest in loving him, hating him, rooting for him, or laughing with him. Active characters shape the plot through the choices they make, and their desires create mirrored desires in the audience.”

Like most teens, Alice knows she shouldn’t do drugs. But once she tries them she immediately wants more and she becomes increasingly more curious about different drugs. As her appetite grows, so does her addiction. Soon she goes from dabbling to dealing. Not only can the reader see the effects of drugs through Alice’s deterioration as the book progresses but after each drug relapse she goes on and on about the dangers of drugs and promises herself each time that this time will be her last. But the addiction overpowers her and the drugs win every time.

On page 53 of Writing & Selling the YA Novel, Going writes: “Watching what a character does or does not do can reveal what she wants and help create a fuller sense of who she is both physically and emotionally. This is especially true when we reveal the reasons behind her actions.” After a string of horrific experiences, Alice reveals her desire to become a social worker and someday counsel kids about the evils of drugs. She wants to do better but the drugs are too powerful and her addiction to them keeps sucking her back in.

Above all else, Go Ask Alice is an effective cautionary tale. Rather than lecture the reader about the perils of addiction, it draws our attention to the protagonist and through her internal dialogue, her thoughts, feelings, actions and experiences, it screams: “Don’t do drugs!”

On page 52 of Writing & Selling the YA Novel, Going writes: “In Nancy Lamb’s The Writer’s Guide to Crafting stories for Children, she writes: ‘What happens to characters—how they suffer and celebrate, how they meet challenges, overcome obstacles and find redemption—is the heart and soul and spirit of story.’”

Alice’s battle with drugs and her journey through addiction, saturated with repeated mistakes and painful suffering, made her a sympathetic and, at times, frustrating character. She knew what she was doing was wrong and yet she just couldn’t seem to stay straight long enough to save herself. Still Alice’s most redeeming quality was her desire to overcome her own addictions so that she could someday become a social worker and help others to avoid making the mistakes she’d made. In a heartbreaking twist, Alice never actually reaches that goal.

When I look back at my youth and think about some of the choices I made and the lessons I learned from reading Go Ask Alice, I truly believe, in some profound way, Alice fulfilled her destiny to help others. Her story certainly helped me.

Works Cited:
Anonymous. Go Ask Alice. Simon Pulse. New York. Print. 1971.
Going, K.L. Writing & Selling the YA Novel. Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books. 2008.
Handley, Victoria. Wild Ink: How to Write Fiction for Young Adults. Prufrock Press. 2010.
Jennings. Frank., Literature for Adolescents–Pap or Protein? Source: The English Journal, Vol. 45, No. 9. (526-531). National Council of Teachers of English. 1956.
Wikipedia. Web site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Sparks
Wikipedia. Web site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Ask_Alice