Identical #2 *Spoilers*

          I have just finished reading Identical by Ellen Hopkins. This book is about two girls, who are identical twins. Their mom is never around, and their father sexually abuses one of the girls. Throughout the book they mention an accident, making it clear something serious has happened but your not sure what. The twins in the book are completely different people, but somehow at the same time very similar. At the end of the book, what is really going on becomes clear. This is only one sister, the other twin died in the accident that was being mentioned. However she had a disease that made her think that there was two of her. One moment she would be Kaeleigh (who she actually was), and then the next moment she would think she was her twin, Raeanne. I noticed that although you know there is something the author isn’t telling you, and you don’t really noticed anything that peculiar about the situation, if you go back throughout the book, there are things throughout the book that were almost like clues, that this was happening.

            For example some obvious ones that I was actually wondering about throughout the book were that they never seem to be together. The other twin would always be somewhere else. At rare points in the book, they would both be at home, or at school, but they never talked or interacted. Also, when they were with other people, they would never call them by name. Sometimes, people would call Kaeleigh (the actually twin) but never Raeanne. Another thing is that other people never talked about Raeanne, although they did talk about Kaeleigh.

            Some less obvious, and more specific moments in the book where the author kind of shows that there really aren’t two people, is when Kaeleigh is talking to Ian, and he is saying how she is always with other guys. Kaeleigh thinks this is Raeanne doing this, not realizing it is actually herself, and of course the other characters know it’s her. However when she is talking to Ian she really doesn’t understand what he is talking about, and something comes up, and they say they will talk about it but they never do. I think this was Hopkins trying to give you a little clue, but not actually give it away, because if they were to talk about it further, she would have said it was Raeanne, and Ian would have told her there wasn’t a Raeanne, making the truth come out too early in the book.

            Another not so obvious clue is about the relationships they have with people, two that help show there is only one person. The first one is with a girl at school named Madison. In the book Madison doesn’t get along with either Raeanne or Kaeleigh, but she has no real reason to hate Kaeleigh. Raeanne is going out with her ex boyfriend, so she is extremely mean to her, but in Kaeleigh’s eyes, there is no reason, for the way she acts. Obviously it is Kaeleigh who is actually dating him, explaining the way she treats her. Another relationship is with her father. Kaeleigh’s father is very protective of her. She has to come home straight home after school, and he has to know about everything she does. In the book Kaeleigh is the perfect child, Raeanne however is the opposite. While reading you wonder how Kaeleigh will get in trouble for the smallest things however Raeanne can do whatever she wants. Their father doesn’t seem to even notice Raeanne, which of course would be because she isn’t alive. This I think was a big clue in the book.

            One last thing in noticed is that Raeanne is always talking about Kaeleigh, and the things she does. However Kaeleigh never mentions Raeanne. I think this may be because when she is Kaeleigh, she knows that Raeanne is dead. However I don’t think she knows that she thinks she is Raeanne sometimes. This is another big clue. Concluding that, although it isn’t obvious that these twins end up being one person, after finding out, it is clear to see that the author left many clues throughout the book.

Identical

I am currently reading the book Identical by Ellen Hopkins. This book is about two identical twins Kaeleigh and Raeanne, and is written from each of their perspectives. Their father is a famous judge, and their mother is running for office, and is constantly on the rode campaigning, and doesn’t seem to care about them. Their father one the other hand is the opposite. He is very controlling especially of Kaeleigh. He also happens to not be a very great person, not only is he controlling of Kaeleigh, but he also sexually abuses her. Kaeleigh being just like her mother who isn’t around, seems to attract her father in very unnatural ways. Raeanne on the other hand is almost jealous of the attention that Kaeleigh is given, which promotes her bad behavior.

This book like the rest of her books is written in poems, which vary very much depending on the text and what is going on in the book. Some are structured very simply and read more like any other novel than poems. Other are more complicated and creative and express the text, and what the characters are thinking. For example on page is about finding a long lost love, and the poems are shaped like hearts (page 198). Or another page is full of questions and the poem is shaped like a questions mark (page 290).

While reading, one big thing I noticed about the set up of the poems is that right before the character narrator switches to the next character, and the first poem of the new character, the poem is always set up the same way. There are around three to five small paragraphs to the side, and after each paragraph one word to the opposite side. If you just read the single words on the right they actually make a complete sentence, which is usually a very poetic summary of the last section, or poem. The first poem of the next section has the same thing as the last poem of the section before. These poems can have different meanings for the different context there in though.

One example of one of these sentences is “Death near calls to me from the shadows” (316 and 317). In the first poem it is in (Kaeleigh’s) she is very upset and is talking about how hurt she is and how the only way to escape is death. She even tries to cut herself. In Raeanne’s poem she finds the cut on Kaeleigh, still relating to how she is talking about death.

In conclusion I think that this shows how the set up of this poem really brings out the more poetic side of the book, and the deeper meanings of the poems. Hopkins does a great job explaining what she means through her poems and their structure. Also she finds way to describe inner character thinkings in abstract very abstract ways, where you literally have to read between the lines. 

Fallout

The book Fallout by Ellen Hopkins is about three different kids who have the same mother, none of which were raised by her. Kristina, their mother has different relationships with all of these kids, who also have different relationships to each other, and were raised by different people. While reading this book I realized that all the characters have many physical, emotional, and psychological problems. All of them have a whole left by Kristina, that they fill with these big problems.

Hunter was Kristina’s first child and she raised him for about the first year of his life. She then fell back into her old ways, and basically abandoned him. However he was probably the luckiest one. He was left to be raised by his grandparents, Kristina’s parents. He also gets to see Kristina often, as she comes for holidays. Autumn, Kristina’s next child was raised by Kristina and her father, until she about two, when Kristina pushed them out. Her father ended up going to jail and she went to live with her Grandfather and her Aunt. After she moved there, she never met Kristina, or any of her siblings. She didn’t even know she had any. The youngest character in the book, but still not Kristina’s last child is Summer. She lived with her father’s parents until she was about two, when they died. She then moved in with her father and his girlfriend, who abused her. As people found she moved in and out of many foster homes, and sometimes back to her father, until his home was once again considered “unsuitable.” Kristina comes to visit her ever so often, and she goes to Kristina’s parents occasionally on holidays, so she knows Hunter.

All of these kids have some sort of void in there life that Kristina left for them, and all of them seem to react differently to it, and have different problems that she left them with. For Hunter, his big problem is anger. He is angry. Angry with Kristina, angry at, angry with his father (who he never met), and most important he is angry with himself. The anger in him is what brings out all the anger to other people, and it is what triggers another problem, which is the lack of self-control her has when he is angry- which is often. He as angry at Kristina, for not being a mother, for caring more about herself then him, for bringing out the anger in him. He is angry with his father, because he rapped Kristina, and that’s why he’s here. And he is angry with himself, for being angry, and for letting him take it out on the people he loves. For letting his anger control him, and mold his life into what it is. All he wants is for the anger to go away, to not take over him, for the trigger to stop triggering it. The trigger, which is Kristina.

Autumn doesn’t know Kristina, doesn’t even know her name until the end of the book, but Kristina still makes her angry. She makes her not full, which Autumn fills with her major problem, OCD, which happens to come with panic attacks. The trigger of her OCD is anger, and the trigger of that it of course Kristina. Her OCD controls her back, and holds her back unimaginably. She has no friends, she can’t even really be around people without literally having a panic attack. The only person she can talk to is her aunt, who is loving and gracious, but just doesn’t understand it. Doesn’t understand that she has this hole in her life that needs to be filled, and can only be filled with what left it there, Kristina. Not even necessarily knowing her, just knowing who she is, which Kristina denies her.

Summer’s big problem is that she is too much like Kristina. She is impulsive, and not always in a good way. Like Kristina she is very smart, but just doesn’t show it. Her boyfriend has anger problems, just like all of Kristina’s did, and she is very close to drugs, just like Kristina. She just happens to have enough strength to pull away from them, unlike Kristina. Summer’s way of filling the whole for Kristina, is to be her. Like all the other characters Summer doesn’t like or mean for this to happen. But she has no control. The control was taken, when the hole was filled, and the hole would have to filled by Kristina actually being there mother, something that will never happen.