Phoenix Rising Essay

The Young adult unfermented Phoenix boost or how to survive your bearing by Cynthia D. appoint is a blunt sensitive story somewhat the serious effects of seventeen-year-old Helen Castles death from cancer on her family. The story is told through and through the eyes of Jessie who has been traumatized by her older sisters death. Jessie and the early(a) members of her family begin a ameliorate process, while Helen, whose world we see through Jessie comes to terms with a life that seems capricious and unjust to Jessie.She feels pain, anger, l wholenessliness, confusion and withdrawal throughout the novel. The family is shattered. Its new kinetics ar realistically revealed with the already strained relationship between Lucas, and the get down that become explosive. Jessie reads on in the journal to learn Helens feelings as her cancer progresses, which ranges from morbid despair to soaring hope that is made to a greater extent poignant to the readers reading along with her. The setting of the story is white, comfortably middle-class, calcium suburbia.The characters in Phoenix Rising are of average intelligence and are raised above being stereotypical characters by the pain, reflection, and eventual ingathering of Helens death forces upon them. They remain true to their backgrounds and natures throughout their trials and adjustments. It is the mark of Cynthia D. Grants talent that the reader never doubts they are reading this novel through believable teenage eyes. The central character of the novel is Jessie, and the one who is most dangerously affected by the older sisters death.Jessies t stopency is not only to idealize her sister make her feel worthless, and unattractive but she also feels that she has failed to reach Helen and talk to her about her illness making Jessie shut herself off from her father, mother, her friend Bambi, Helens sheik Bloomfield, and their next-door neighbor little Sara Rose. Jessie not only stops eating toward the end of the novel, she also shuts herself off more(prenominal) ultimately refusing to leave her room.Jessies crony Lucas is the kind family philosopher. On the surface, however he plays a bureau of a rebellious youth whose love for loud rock music. He is an exceptionally good electric and acoustic guitarist and this puts him at odds with his father, whom he engages in arguments at the slightest opportunity. Jessies hard-working architect father seems fixated on his role as a family provider and Lucas as the antagonist. Jessie tells the reader My father thinks he wont cry as long as he keeps screaming.It is as if the father and the other members have been so traumatized by the Helens death that a kind of static role-playing is easier for them than facing their world and lamentable on with their lives. Jessies mother seems simply to have been bludgeoned into being a relatively passive person who can do little more than to keep up with the necessary household chores, to weep for her oldest da ughter, Helen as puff up as the self destructive, Jessie and to drink several glasses of wine to pall her pain. Two more important characters round out the characters in this novel. adept is Bloomfield, who is always called by his last name. He is Helens boyfriend and the other is Bambi. Bambi is both sisters plump, loud mouthed, and mildly sex-crazed friend. Jessie reads further into the Helens journal and discovers Bloomfield is not the fair-weather friend she has criticized him as being. Similarly, she finds there is more to the tattooed, dodge nailed Bambi than meets the eye. She is surprisingly admirable for her down-to-earth, her common sense ability to cut through the silliness that ordinarily surrounds her.