Book Report Go Ask Alice English Literature Essay

a) The story takes place in the 60’s, because the book had been published two years after Alice death in 1972. b) The story starts when Alice is fifteen and ended when she is seventeen, so it’s about two years in the life of Alice. c) The story takes place in America. The names of the places aren’t mentioned, but a part of the story takes place in San Francisco, that’s where she goes with her friend Chris. She also goes to Denver and Coos Bay. She mentions going to a rally in Southern California, and going back East with her family. Where Gran and Gramps and her family live is not mentioned in the story.

Sometimes she writes down what a place looks like (for example a room), but not very often. When she’s in the State Mental Hospital, she describes what her room looks like and the hallway, that makes the story very real, it’s like you’re in there when you read it.

‘Then they took me down a smelly, ugly, dingy, paint-peeling old hallway’.

‘She was stretched out stupidly under the pinball machine in the dayroom, and there

was also a teen age boy who kept bouncing his head and muttering idiotically’.

3 Plot

Alice moves to another state where she doesn’t fit in. In the summerholiday she

experiens with drugs and get a while after that addicted to the drugs. She moves

from home, because the drugs and at the end of the story, she died.

4 Characters

– Alice is the real main character. She is the writer of the diary. She is fifteen years

old and dies when she just turned seventeen. Her name is not known, her name is

not mentioned in the book, so they gave her the name Alice. She is not very self-

confident in the beginning of the story, she is not very happy with her weight and it

takes a long time to finf new friends when they move to another city. After she meets

a lot of new people and did a lot of things, she learned very much. She is really

growing up during the story. She gets a lot of life-experience which gives her more

self-confidence. In the end everything is going well, she finally got what she wants

and she finally turned her back to drugs. And then she dies…

– Tim is Alice’s little brother, first she thinks he is very irritating, but during the story

she finds out she can talk with him about a lot of things. He is a very helpful brother.

(Minor character)

– Alexandria is Alice’s little sister, she is very sweet and Alice often wants to be like

Alex, because she has not got problems like her. (Minor character)

– Her mother is according to Alice always bugging her about everything, that is one of

the reasons why Alice has not got much self-confidence. (Minor character)

– Alice’s father is a university professor, he loves her very much, is always trying to

do the best he can to please Alice. He is the one who worked very hard to get Alice

out of the Mental Hospital. (Minor character)

– Alice’s grandparents are very important. Alice loves her Gran and Gramps very

much and I think the one who misses them the most when they both die. (Minor

characters)

– Jill, at a party of Jill Peters, a schoolmate from her old school, she gets in contact

with drugs fot the first time. (Minor character)

– Beth, Gerta and Fawn are her new friends at her new school. (Minor characters)

– Roger is the boy she loves at the begin of the story. (Minor character)

– Joel Reems is the student that Alice hopes to marry. (Minor character)

– Jan and Marcie are drug-users at her new school. (Main characters)

– Richie and Ted are pushers, Alice falls in love with Richie. (Minor characters)

– Bill, Joe, Lane and Jacky are also drugs-users at her new school, but they are not

very important for the rest of the story. (Minor characters)

– Chris is the girl who is going to San Francisco with Alice. (Main character)

– Mario Mellani is Alice’s employer in San Francisco. (Minor character)

– Sheila is Chris’ employer in San Francisco. ( Minor character)

– Doris is a drug-user who with Alice lives in Coos Bay, Oregon. (Minor character)

– Babbie and Tom are young drug-users who Alice meets in the Mental Hospital.

(Minor character)

5 Theme

This book is a true story. It’s a diary from a girl, so it isn’t really written with a reason

for the readers. The reason it was written is to express her feelings and not that other

people can read it. She didn’t want anyone to read it. She just wants to write the

things that are in her head. The reason it is published, is to teach the people who

read it about the consequences of drugs. That is not always just once. Once you’ve

tried it, you want more. Your life isn’t getting better when you’re using drugs.

B Your opinion

1 I like the character Alice most, because she is a good person who wrote a very

good diary which lets us see very realistically how drugs can destroy your life and

that of others.

2 I don’t know which character displeased me most, because the book does not tell

much about the other characters; you read the story through Alice her eyes, so you

don’t know what the other characters think and why they do what they do.

3 Because the story is very realistic I can imagine how Alice feels. Sometimes I had

sad feelings, for example when her grandparents died short after each other. Or

when Alice came back to school and all her old friends neglected her and were very

unfriendly to her. Also she had no one who gave her some support with her attempt

to quit the drugs.

4 I don’t have a favourite part of the story, because there didn’t happen a lot of nice

things. There are no difficult or boring parts in the book. I think because there were

no things in it that I didn’t understand. Also it was not boring, because there were a

lot of things that happened in this book all the time.

5 I didn’t learn anything from this story. What you could learn from this story is that

drugs can’t help you from your problems and it is not so nice as it seems in the

beginning (when you make a lot of fun with friends), because when you are addicted,

it is to late and the drugs can destruct you. All that I wrote above, I knew already.

6 The question about this story that is not answered yet is: Why did Alice have

overdoses though it seemed that she was no longer on the drugs?

C The summary

This book is about Alice. She is a fifteen-year old girl from the USA. She is not very popular at her school. Also her weight is too high, she tinks. She loves Roger, a boy from her school. Her father is going to have a new job and she is going to move to another place with her family. At her new school, she can’t get any new friends. Her first new friend is Beth. The summer after that, Alice goes to her Gran and Gramps, her grandparents. Then she is going to use drugs. The first time was at a party with Jill. At that party she drank a coke with a kind of drug in it. At that party Alice meets Bill. Het teaches her more about drugs and after a short time she is having sex with him. That was the first time she had sex with someone. She decides not to use drugs anymore. After a short time she met Chris. They are going to work in the same shop. Chris has some friends too, which she met. Her friends, Richie and Ted, use drugs, as well as Chris. After a short time she is going to use drugs again. She even sells drugs to young children. Chris and Alice run away from home and start a shop with jewellery, but they soon quit running the shop. After that they both go back to their family. She did not expect her mother was pleased to see her again, but her mother is very pleased. Later she is in love with a boy who is called Joel. Alice parents send her to a psychiatrist. Then she goes away from home and she meets Doris. But soon Alice goes home again. Then she starts a new diary, because she is trying to start a new life. Soon Gran and Gramps die. Then she used drugs again and she comes into a hospital. In that hospital many children are helped, because they used drugs before. At her birthday (20 September) she meets Joel again and it’s going well between them. Three weeks later Alice died, at the age of seventeen, because of using too many drugs.

Go ask Alice

Herschreven

A The story

2 Setting

a) Quote: September 17. School was a nightmare. I was afraid I’d see Roger every time I

turned a corner in the hall.

b) Quote: December 24.