The Late Great Me Analysis

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“Men are at the mercy of events and cannot control them”- Herodotus. In this quote Herodotus is trying to explain that people are vulnerable to what the future holds(events) for each individual. The events can be so unpredictable that it is impossible to control them. While it is a fact that “men are at the mercy of events” it is not true that men do not have the ability to control them. Although people don’t have the choice of the events they experience, they can deal with them and control how they respond to it. These examples were evident in Lord of the Flies by William Golding and The Late Great Me by Sandra Scoppettone. In both of these books the protagonists faced terrible events that they did not choose to have and were unpredictable…show more content…
The Late Great Me was a book about a teenage girl named Geri that was an average looking girl that did not really excel in anything. She had a brother that got all the attention at home and at school she was one of the “freaks” and only had two friends. One day Geri met a boy named Dave who later got her into drinking alcohol with him. She really enjoyed it and thought it made her feel very good as it would be an escape for her from her sad reality. At home her mother would always be very distant and would constantly talk about her past as a teenager and how popularity is very important which would get even worse later in the book to the point where she totally isolates herself from people and gets sent to an institution. Geri started to drink more and stopped talking to her two best and only friends Carolyn and BJ to join another group of friends who were “cooler” and would always drink and throw partys. Geri eventually became an alcoholic and would be drinking every single day which was a choice of hers. Nobody forced Geri to drink and after everytime a terrible event would happen she would always promise herself she’d never do it again but then when she felt low she would just start small and go back up. The point of this is that the events such as her families situation could have been solved if she had put effort into it but instead she began drinking which was her choice and she had total control over…show more content…
People have the intelligence and decision making which allows them to make up for the events they cannot control. For example people cannot control a tornado but they can try to control fixing the aftermath and all the damage. In The Late Great Me and Lord Of The Flies the main characters were not able to control what happened to them, but they did control what they could have done as a result of it. Their decisions led to whether they survived it all or
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