Creative Writing
The experience was worth the risk.
If only there was more time.
Too much dreaming, never enough sleep.
Dream for wishes, wish for dreams
We want what we cannot have.
Formal Essay
Throughout the novel My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult uses Kate's central line symbolically to demonstrate the essential bonds of sisterhood.
Themes
The Ambiguous Line Between Right and Wrong
Anna’s wish to put her own interests first—specifically to live independently of Kate and to stop serving involuntarily as Kate’s donor—and her incompatible desire to put Kate’s interests first form the central conflict of the novel. The trial, which takes up a considerable portion of the novel’s plot, centers on resolving this conflict. For most of the trial’s length no easy distinction can be made between which is right and which is wrong. Anna has no legal obligation to donate her kidney, which would require surgery and carries a risk of health problems. Yet without Anna’s kidney, which Anna can live without, Kate will die. Several of the characters struggle throughout the book to determine which is the right solution, with different characters arguing different sides of the point, but no one can come up with an argument that settles the issue completely. Only when Anna reveals Kate’s wish to die, making it clear that even Kate does not want Anna’s kidney, does Judge DeSalvo issue a ruling.
Themes
The Ambiguous Line Between Right and Wrong
Anna’s wish to put her own interests first—specifically to live independently of Kate and to stop serving involuntarily as Kate’s donor—and her incompatible desire to put Kate’s interests first form the central conflict of the novel. The trial, which takes up a considerable portion of the novel’s plot, centers on resolving this conflict. For most of the trial’s length no easy distinction can be made between which is right and which is wrong. Anna has no legal obligation to donate her kidney, which would...