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.