...Bethany Gavins A&P Mr. Schroeder My Sister’s Keeper When an individual is affected by an illness and death, the people that know the individual, usually the family, are affected, too. In My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult, Kate Fitzgerald is diagnosed with Leukemia, which affects every member of her family. The Kubler-Ross’ cycle of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance explains how each family member deals with Kate’s death and grief. Each member has a different way of dealing with Kate’s death. A chronic illness doesn’t affect just the person who has it, but also the people around the person. The Fitzgerald’s are all devastated and are full of grief throughout Kate’s struggle and death from Leukemia. The main character, Anna Fitzgerald, shows her acceptance of the Kubler-Ross cycle. Anna hates to admit that her sister will die regardless of what the family tries to do. Therefore, she tries to save herself and Kate from any more suffering by gaining legal rights to do what she wants to do with her body despite what her parents tell her. Anna knows that her parents, especially her mother, Sara, will go to any extremes to make Kate win the battle against cancer or at least live longer. Anna feels like winning the case will make her parents realize that Anna, too, has a right to live a normal life with a normal childhood. She’s accepted that Kate will soon die and doesn’t want to see Kate suffer any longer. Anna also feels that she’s doing Kate a favor...
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...The narrative of My Sister’s Keeper alternates between first-person accounts by the novel’s different characters. The bulk of the story takes place in the present, in a one-and-a-half week stretch of time. Sara Fitzgerald, a former attorney and current stay-at-home mom, narrates the remainder of the story from different points in the past but moving gradually toward the present. One final chapter, the epilogue, occurs in the future. In 1990, doctors diagnose Sara’s two-year-old daughter, Kate, with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia. The news that their child might die shocks Sara and her firefighter husband, Brian, but Sara immediately resolves to begin Kate on treatment. Kate starts chemotherapy, and her oncologist, Dr. Chance, suggests she might eventually need a bone marrow transplant, preferably from a related donor. The Fitzgeralds test their four-year-old son, Jesse, but he is not a match. Dr. Chance mentions that another unborn sibling could be a match, and Sara suggests to Brian that they have another child. Sara’s passages, told at different points over the next fourteen years, focus largely on Kate’s struggles. She describes how scientists help them conceive another daughter, Anna, who is a perfect genetic match for Kate. Over the course of the next few years, Anna undergoes several procedures, including frequent blood withdrawals and a painful bone marrow extraction, to help keep Kate alive. Sara describes in great detail the pain and suffering Kate endures. Chemotherapy...
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...Director Nick Cassavett has created yet another tearjerker with his drama, My Sisters keeper. This movie is based on the novel, “My sisters keeper” by Jodi Picoult. The film stars, Cameron Diaz (Sara) and Jason Patric (Brian), they are the parents of Kate who is suffering from leukemia. She was diagnosed with cancer when she was four years old and since then her mom has devoted her life to saving Kate. The parents receive a recommendation from a doctor to have another child, solely on the purpose that the child will be Kate’s genetic match. There are many ethical questions that rise with this decision. This 11-year-old child is Anna, who undergoes many procedures such as, donating blood, bone marrow, and stem cells, to aid in the survival of her sister. When she is asked to donate her kidney to Kate, she refuses and claims she wants a life of her own and to control her own body. Anna seeks for a lawyer and decides to sue her parents, on the right to receive a medical emancipation. The mother is aghast by this lawsuit, however, the father concurs with Anna’s decision. Cassavett uses a sequence of flashbacks to reveal the legitimate reason why Anna is suing her parents, before the results of the case are identified. He uses a variety of cinematographic techniques to increase the audience’s emotional response. He focuses on the detail of the characters, shooting close-ups and maintaining the camera at eye-level. When he is shooting the family from a distance he still uses a...
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...My Sister’s Keeper Based on the book by Jodi Picoult ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, we would all like to thank the Man with the Big guns from above named God. We thank you the most for without you we would never be able to do the things we love in life. We would never be able to see and feel the great wonders of the world that you have made for us especially the friendship and love that you never fail to provide us. Thank you for that. To our teacher we thank you for giving us a chance to show you what we can do. For always teaching us the right things to improve in ourselves not only in our writing of essays in class but also in our own separate lives. You have helped us in so many ways but the most would be for giving us the opportunity to make peace with the ones we have hurt in the past. Without you we would have lost another friend in life and lost the opportunity for friendship that could last for a life time. Thank you from the Bottom of our hearts. We also thank those who have helped us in making this book of ours, for without them we wouldn’t be able to finish. Thanks for our parents for providing us with everything we need in class just to give us a good education. Thanks to those who became patient with us under pressure thank you for understanding. And lastly the leader would like to thank her members for all the things they have done, for doing their own parts and cooperating oh so well with everything she asked for them to do, thanks...
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...My Sister's Keeper tells the story of 13-year-old Anna Fitzgerald who sues her parents for medical emancipation. They expect her to give up one of her kidneys for her older sister Kate, who has had leukemia since she was 2 years old. Her parents conceived Anna because they needed a donor of umbilical chord blood to keep Kate alive, and since then Anna has donated bone marrow and stem cells to Kate when she relapsed. But now she no longer wants to continue being used as an organ bank for her sister, and her only resort is the law. She does her research and then goes to a lawyer, Campbell Alexander, who has had some notable successes representing children in courts. Alexander goes around with a service dog, but he is not blind, deaf, or physically disabled, and he won't tell anyone what the dog is for. When Anna asks why he has the dog, called Judge, he wisecracks that he has an iron lung and the dog keeps him away from magnets. The novel takes the reader through the lawsuit, told from the points of view of each of the major characters, Anna, Kate, their brother Jessie, their parents Sarah and Brian, Campbell, and Anna's guardian ad litem, Julia, who turns out to have been Campbell's college girlfriend. On the audiobook, each character's portions is narrated by a different performer, which enhances the sense that these are genuinely different perspectives. The reader comes to understand the quandaries faced by Anna's parents, who love all their children but are forced...
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...My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult, is an amazing story of love and sacrifice. In the book, Anna Fitzgerald was born to help her sister, Kate, battle leukemia. All of Anna’s life, from the time she was born to her teenage years, has had to sacrifice her time and her body for her sister. Over the course of time Anna has been donating her blood and plasma to her sister. Anna was tired of giving everything to her sister, so she hired an attorney to sue her parents. Getting closer and closer to the trial Anna did not know if she wanted to actually go through with the trial. She did not want her sister to die, all she wanted was to make her own decisions. The trial was ripping her family apart, Anna's dad, Brian, agreed with Anna; but her mother...
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...My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult Where is the line with choices? How is a decision determined to be right or wrong? These are some of the questions that summarize the concept of the book My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Anna, the protagonist, files a law suit against her parents, Brian and Sara, because they forced her to make medical decisions that were not her own. Anna is sympathetic with her sister’s condition and has given all she can to ensure Kate’s recovery from leukemia. Yet the discovery of the purpose of her being conceived through vitro fertilization was for the intention to possible spare Kate’s life. Anna claims that her parents’ (Sara and Brian Fitzgerald) push for her to donate her kidney unwillingly is an infringement of her “right to life”. She also claims that she is being denied the right to make decisions as regards her own body. While Anna believes that such an action would be very wrong, her parents emphasize that it is the right decision if saving Kate’s life is the ultimate goal. This book covers this life of this family during the trial period. It focuses on the tension that the family undergoes in a bid to keep one of them Kate, alive. The emotional tenacity of this book brings a different notion of health communication. An analysis of the events in this novel reveals that indeed right and wrong is subjective. This paper examines the different characters and events in My Sister’s Keeper and tries to analyze the theme of what choices are right...
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...My Sister's Keeper Jorge Vera HUM176 May 8, 2011 My Sister's Keeper The movie brings up a theme that most people have a hard time discussing amongst family members: “When is it time to say goodbye?” The story revolves around a dying sister who has cancer and her life has been prolonged because of her sister being a medical donor. The donor sister finally decides she does not want to continue donating body samples for her sister. The family’s mother has been volunteering the well daughter’s body samples most of her born life to keep her sick daughter around as long and medically possible, until the well daughter says she no longer wants to help. It has to be very difficult to be in a type of situation that her whole life has involved being poked by needles and put in a hospital to help her sister who has cancer. The only way she could fight this bout with cancer has been samples of blood and bone marrow to prolong her sister’s life. She finally decides to say no more and with the help of a lawyer who also has a medical issue unknown to everyone else, sue her parents for the right to say no and not have to go through more medical treatments for her sister. Society has grown to a point where anyone can sue anyone, including parents, for just about anything. Sometimes it seems morally wrong for children to sue their parents for anything. The children should owe their lives to their parents for dedicating their lives to their children. As the court proceedings continue...
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...Family Running head: Family Assessment My Sister’s Keeper Assessment of the Fitzgerald Family SBSN 360P Professor D. Hoitt, MSN, RN 21 March 2013 Abstract The purpose of this paper is to provide a selective assessment of the functional status of the Fitzgerald family. This premise of this assessment is to define areas of strength and or weakness is the family system. Due to the limited amount of contact with its members, this evaluation is not to be viewed as a comprehensive and exhaustive list of findings for this social unit. This is merely a limited overview of the family’s ability to cope and grow in spite of the chronic condition of promyelocytic leukemia in the eldest daughter. Identifying Data “My Sister’s Keeper” film adaptation revolves around the Fitzgerald family. Sickness causes the Fitzgerald family to stray from the traditional nuclear family model and become and extended family. The extended family includes at least one parent, at least one child, and at least one other non- parent/sibling member. (Hockenberry & Wilson, 2009)The story chronicles the events surrounding the life of Kate Fitzgerald, who is suffering from promyelocytic lymphoma. The story is told mainly from the perspective of Kate’s eleven year old sister, Anna Fitzgerald, who was genetically engineered for spare parts. We also get brief glimpses at the perspectives of her parents, Brian and Sara Fitzgerald. Very little time is spent portraying her brother, Jesse...
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...The title of my book is My Sister’s Keeper, and it was written by Jodi Picoult. It’s about a girl named Anna and her family. They live in Upper Darby, Rhode Island. Anna is 13 years old. She has a sister and a brother. Their names are Kate and Jesse. Her mom’s name is Sara and her dad’s name is Brian. Kate was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia in 1990. Anna was created as a perfect genetic match for Kate. One day, Anna goes to a pawnshop to sell a locket. This locket was given to her by her dad after she donated bone marrow to Kate. After this, she went to see a lawyer, whose name is Campbell Alexander. She tells Campbell that she wants to sue her parents for the rights to her body. Julia Romano is hired as Anna’s guardian ad litem, which is a person who represents minor children’s best interests and advises the court. As the story goes on, you see how her decision to not donate a kidney to her sister starts to affect her whole family. Her parents start having marriage problems because they have different opinions about Anna and the case. Jesse starts acting up more than ever, because he’s being noticed even less. Anna ends up winning the case, and she becomes medically emancipated from her parents. Campbell is given medical power of attorney for her until the age of 18. On the way to the hospital after the trial, Campbell and Anna get into a serious car accident. Anna suffers irreversible brain damage and dies. They give her kidney to Kate, and...
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...READING I. Title and Author: My Sister’s Keeper By: Jodi Picoult II. Fiction (not a true story) or non-fiction (a true story): Fiction III. Settings: Rhode Island IV. Important characters or people: Anna Fitzgerald – is youngest Fitzgerald child. The protagonist of the novel. Anna is thirteen years old. Anna is smart, funny, and observant. Sara Fitzgerald - is mother of the Fitzgerald family. Sara is strong, stubborn, and intelligent. Campbell Alexander - is Anna’s lawyer. In the beginning overconfident and harsh. Brian Fitzgerald - is the father of the Fitzgerald children and a works as firefighter. Jesse Fitzgerald – is the oldest of the Fitzgerald children. Jesse cannot save Kate, and he has never been able to forgive himself for that. Also, he has often felt ignored by his parents. Kate Fitzgerald - is the middle Fitzgerald child. She has struggled with cancer nearly her entire life Dr. Chance - Kate’s oncologist. Is a kind but serious man. Dr. Chance represents the science and medicine keeping Kate alive. V. Other characters: Zanne - is Sara’s older sister. Zanne is a woman without children. She watches Anna and Jesse when Sara goes with Kate to the hospital. Judge DeSalvo - is fair and kind. Judge DeSalvo honestly cares for Anna’s well-being. Taylor Ambrose - is Kate’s crush and cancer patient. Kate and Taylor’s short relationship emphasizes that, at heart, Kate is a normal teenage girl. Izzy Romano - is Julia’s twin sister and roommate. Izzy’s doesn’t...
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...In My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult tells the story of a family who is faced with a tragedy and in turn creates an ethical dilemma without even realizing it. Brian and Sarah Fitzgerald don’t think they will have any more children after Jesse and Kate, but when Kate is diagnosed with leukemia ideas of having another child spark in the minds of the Fitzgeralds. Although one might think the Fitzgeralds would have another child to replace the one they may lose, their plan is to use the child to keep Kate alive. The Fitzgeralds have a doctor genetically select an embryo as a perfect match for Kate and a short nine months later Anna is born so she can be used as “spare parts” every time Kate’s organs fail. The most important issue presented in this book is the fact that Anna was created for the sole purpose of keeping her sister alive. Not only was Anna born for an unethical reason, but she is forced by her parents to undergo the many and sometimes painful medical procedures required to keep Kate alive. The dispute between Anna and her mother, Sarah, portrays this issue best in the book. When Anna becomes old enough to stand up to her parents, she tells them she doesn’t want to donate anymore and fights them in a legal battle for “medical emancipation”. If Anna is granted medical emancipation from her parents so she wouldn’t have to donate anymore, but Kate would die. Sarah makes her decisions with the best intentions, but sometimes the decisions she makes favor Kate more than they...
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...Melissa Stapleton Ms. Perryman SBI4U May 21st, 2013 My Sisters Keeper Every day people face challenges that are affected by what we feel is morally right or not. One topic in particular however, is an ongoing battle of ethical morality and this topic has to do with the problem surrounding the reasons for designer babies. A designer baby is defined as “a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics". (Web Source) Some people say that this process is unnatural and should never have even been created. Others say that this process is the way of the future, and that everyone should undergo this operation. Whichever side people lie on, there are valid points for both sides of the argument. Personally, I believe that children should not be produced for medical reasons under any circumstances because it would create an in equality amongst society, it could cause harmful long term effects and it takes away the child’s rights. Firstly, if this process gained popularity it would create an inequality amongst society and create children with added benefits. The process that creates designer babies is called Vitro Fertilization and it involves “monitoring and stimulating the development of healthy egg(s) in the ovaries. Then collecting the eggs and securing the sperm. Then combining the eggs and sperm together in the laboratory and provide...
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...Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë has been around for more than 150 years with schools around the nation still studying this work of art. It is a novel that has ““...less to do with the conflict of great forces that typifies great works of literature, and more to do with the subtle irritation of a delayed resolution to its most important episode.” (Thornton). With the opportunity to stand the test of time, the novel by Brontë is now on the goodreads list of popular merit books. However, not all books can withstand the test of time. Jodi Picoult’s novel My Sister’s Keeper may not be as fortunate as Jane Eyre in terms of literary merit because it lacks the certain aspects such as maturity in themes and writing style, deeper analytic meanings, and...
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...Some parents plan when to have a baby and give life, others a child coming into their life can be quite the surprise. The book My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult uses the issue of genetically engineered babies to illustrate the importance but also the disfunction that can happen to a family under this amount of stress and ethical dilemma. An article called Autonomy of Children and Adolescents in Consent to Treatment I used to compare contemplates whether someone underage should be in charge of their health care decisions which does appear a great amount in health care. The books illustrates the role that Picoult’s character Anna faces when deciding whether she wants to be medically emancipated or continue to be the donor her parent’s created...
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