Mother and Main Character Ella

We all take the lives of others and ours for granted. We never think about how our lives would be different without someone. This is only because we only think of happy endings. We always think it will be alright after a period of time, but it’s not. Imagine waking up in morning and getting ready for school. You walk down the stairs wondering what mom made for breakfast, but just as you enter the kitchen you get hit in the face by the aroma of freshly backed pancakes, with the strong smell of bacon. The aroma knocks you off your feet and you slowly levitate to the dining table and start digging in the pancakes. Now rewind that imagine entering the kitchen. Its pitch black, so you turn on the lights and your mom is nowhere to be found. You than look at the time and you think that it is too late to make yourself some breakfast so you head out without eating anything. Through the dynamic main character of Ella in Julie Orringer’s “Pilgrims,” helps us to see how people can become lost as result of experiencing loss and trauma. In this short story our protagonist Ella has to overcome someone’s death and the illness of someone that is very dear to her. All these actions can change someone forever. Just like that our main character Ella will forever wonder the world a pilgrim.
Illness of someone dear can cause a lot of change to a person’s life. It can scare a person as well as make them uneasy. In the story Ella’s mom is fighting cancer. “…her mother with an IV needle in her arm, the steady drip from the bag of orange liquid, her father speaking softly to himself as he paced the room, her mother shaking so hard she had to be tied down.”(3) Ella’s whole family was affected by their mother’s illness. They were afraid to see where life would take them next.
At night Ella and her brother tapped a secret code against the wall that separated their rooms: one knock, I’m afraid: two knocks, don’t worry: three knock, are you still awake? Four, come quick. And then there was