Go Ask Alice Symbolism

Anonymous. "Go Ask Alice." New York: Avon Books,1982

1. Point of view-the perspective from which the author tells the story. "Alice writes in her undated diary from a hospital. She is unsure how she has ended up here and can only think of the worms she thinks are eating her alive. She has apparently been biting her fingers down to the bone." Undated (July) The book " Go Ask Alice" was written in in first person. This gives the reader an idea of what Alice is thinking and her feelings on what she is battling in her life.
2. symbolism- using one idea to represent a larger idea. "As a purported piece of non-fiction, Go Ask Alice does not have any explicit symbols, but Alice's nightmares and hallucinations of maggots
and worms eating away at corpses or her own body can be viewed as a dual symbol."
At first, Alice's fears of the maggots center on the loneliness of the individual mind.
No one knows what happens to a body underground, hidden from sight. Alice's loneliness and her feeling that only "Diary" understands her connects this anxiety: she fears no one knows what is happening in her mind. In the hospital, she fears that even she does not know what is happening in her mind, and her memory of her unintentional overdose deliver the maggots a second meaning.
3. irony- discrepancy between reality and an understanding or perspective on reality.
4. Selection of detail- the specific detail that the author chooses to include or omit to make a point or high light a certain action. "At a rally in California, Alice takes more drugs and finds life beautiful once more. Confused, Alice reports that she is now a "Priestess of Satan" in some kind of cult. She finds that she's now attracted to females but feels guilty and ashamed of it. She has been reduced to giving someone named "Big Ass" oral sex for drugs. She meets a pregnant girl who says her baby will belong to everybody. Alice wonders if she, too, is pregnant, as she's stopped taking the pill because she never knows what day it is. She loathes her fellow drug users and their lazy, irresponsible lifestyle. She reads in the newspaper about two boys who died of overdosing, and she wishes she were one of
them."
It seems the editor of the diary "Go Ask Alice" did not keep any details out of the book. The reader is directly connected to Alice and what she is experiencing in the drug world.
5. Tone- the attitude the author takes toward a subject. "Alice feels left out of the social scene. The drug-using kids blame Alice for a raid at a party. A boy assaults her on the street in daylight and twists her arm and kisses her, threatening to rape her. Alice only tells her family that she is being "pushed" again by some kids and warns them to be careful. She opens up to Joel about some of her past, and he is kind and supportive. They exchange family heirlooms."
The tone on the book depends mainly on Alice's prospective on her life. In the qoute above Alice dose not enjoy her life at the time. She believes she is being put through the worst of her fears.
6. imagery- words used to give the reader a vivid mental picture. "Alice returns strongly to her family's middle-class values in this section. She prizes her education and studies hard, and her growing love for Joel reaches puppy-dog levels not seen since the days of Roger. While she remains insecure, wondering if Joel likes her in return, and while she fantasizes about marriage like a tittering schoolgirl, her relationship with him is the deepest and most reciprocal of all her flings."
Alice in this chapter of the book , gives the reader an image of an average teen girl falling in love. She is confused and dose not know if the boy likes her back. This scene is all so very easy for a teenage girl to connect with because we all go through the same feelings.
7. Personification - giving inanimate objects human qualities. "Alice reveals that an accidental dose of acid is the cause of her breakdown. Her father says that someone had put it on chocolate-covered peanuts Alice was eating while she was babysitting. Alice slightly remembers this: she had been thinking of her grandfather while eating the peanuts, since he used to like them, and then during the acid trip he materialized as a skeletal figure. Worms and maggots cannibalized his body, then the vermin moved on to Alice, who tried to fend them off as her grandfather pointed to a casket next to his. Other dead things and people forced Alice into the casket and locked her inside."
Alice gives the worms and maggots the quality to eat and destroy the human body once dead. Then she pictures and hallucinates that the worms and maggots are attacking her.
8. Theme- a unifying idea that is a recurrent element in a literary or artistic work. "Alice's problems are as relevant today as in the 1960s. She begins as an insecure girl who worries about sex and popularity, and, to an extent, these anxieties persist throughout her diary; sex continually plays on her mind, whether through her fear of pregnancy or dependency on men, and she remains concerned with what others think of her, especially when she goes "straight." Her sexual maturation is too quick: her schoolgirl crush on Roger turns quickly into a drug-dealing affair with Richie and later devolves into prostitution for drugs. Only with Joel does she develop a mature, fulfilling relationship."
Alice in this scene shows the reader that the 1960's and today are somewhat alike. The recurrent of drugs in the book shows the reader that the book I based around a life of drugs.
9. Plot- the story that is told in a novel or play or movie etc "An unnamed fifteen-year-old diarist, whom the novel's title refers to as Alice, starts a diary. With a sensitive, observant style, she records her adolescent woes: she worries about what her crush Roger thinks of her; she loathes her weight gain; she fears her budding sexuality; she is uncomfortable at school; she has difficulty relating to her parents. Alice's father, a college professor, accepts a teaching position at a different college and the family will move at the start of the new year, which cheers Alice up."
10. social conditions- the conditions the character or in this place Alice lives in. "Someone stashes a burning joint in Alice's locker, and when the principal asks who she thinks did it, she doesn't accuse anyone, mostly out of fear. Her friendship with Joel is losing its passion. Another girl pressures Alice into doing drugs while both girls' mothers chat a few feet away in the supermarket. (June 16–19) Alice's grandmother dies, and Alice agonizes over the thought over worms and maggots eating the body. After the funeral, Joel has a long talk with her about death that makes her feel better. They kiss before he goes."
Alice shows the reader how hard her life is and what she is going through as a teen in the 1960's.