Gone Missing Novel Study

Connections Study

Everyone experiences some form of loss through their life, be it physical, mental or as a result of loving someone. This theme of loss is evident in an abundance of movies, novels and other written works. Example of these include the film, Life is Beautiful, and novels Night, My Sisters Keeper and Gone Missing.

Innocence is a gift we only ever have once. The novel Gone Missing, by Linda Castillo, is one text which expresses loss of innocence. This is displayed by Noah, a young Amish boy who was forced to remain physically and mentally repressed as punishment for participating in activities his parents deemed inappropriate. EXAMPLE FROM INTERVIEW. This quote is from a segment where he sees someone other than his parents in
Jodi Pidcult’s My Sisters Keeper novel explores this idea to the extreme. Her main character, Anna, has been raised as a human organ bank, born with the intention to save her sister, over and over and over again. Anna loses the right to her body to such an extent, she sues her own parents, and as a result, hands her own sister her death sentence. This shows that not only does this book display the physical loss of Anna’s life, but also the many internal organs and parts she was forced to donate – damaging her health in the process and affecting the rest of her life. EXAMPLE - EXPLAIN. The novel Night also displays physical loss. The hard labour required to survive in concentration camps, along with the deprivation of food and water results in both children and adults to perish under the severe conditions. As their bodies are pushed to the limits being denied essential nutrients, their physical strength diminishes, and as a result they become mentally depleted too. This has the greatest impact on readers in the very last paragraph of the book where it states: QUOTE ABOUT LOOKING LIKE A CORPSE. This line emphasises the weak, skeletal figure Elie became and leaves readers with a shocked expression. Loss becomes extremely evident here as along with losing his entire
Loyalty to the extent of sacrificing yourself to save someone you believe is worth saving is a truly noble cause, and one readers think about in the novel, My Sister’s Keeper. Within this novel, relationships, specifically familial ones, are tested to the limit, and in the end, Kate decides to sacrifice her life to allow her sister to live the rest of hers in happiness in exchange for her cancer ridden one. This is ruined when Anna is killed in a car accident and Kate ends up receiving the kidney she convinced Anna not to give. As it’s what she would have wanted, Kate successfully receives the transplant, but this makes audience members consider the loss everyone suffers in this book, and Kate’s attempt to save her beloved sister which is the last thing she ever did for her. It portrays the true extent of loyalty. (FIND EXAMPLES – EXPLAIN). The theme loss for love is also evident within the film Life is Beautiful. This entire story is based in World War II and the lengths one particular father goes to in order to spare his sons innocence and happy childhood. His success comes at a cost however. This cost is his life. In one of the last scenes he is seen taken down an alley and shot, but before as he walks, he pretends to be playing a game to spare his son horrific mental relapses throughout the remainder of his life. The reason for including ‘loss for love’ in both of these works is to produce sympathy from viewers and create a more