All the Bright Places---Chan

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Jennifer Niven is successful in making readers fall in love with the characters in All the Bright Places. She writes the people in the book with familiar characteristics expected but the personalities they reveal are unexpected. Finch’s suicide and how he got to that point is important to take note as an educator who have so many young teens on our watch.  
Theodore Finch is a high school guy that is attractive and has his share of sexual experiences. He also is bi-polar but before he finds that out he switches up who he wants to be for a time. “I’m starting to dig Badass Finch. A cute underclassman actually stops me in the hall and asks if I need help finding my way. When she wants to know if I’m from London, I say cheers and aye up and bangers and mash in.” It’s a great element to foreshadow Finch’s mental illness and it clicks when the readers are told what is going on. He is very front about suicide, but he has a battle within him to really do it. “I’m sputtering and splashing and coughing up water. There’s no rush of having survived, only emptiness, and lungs that need air, and wet hair sticking to my face.”
It is also sad that the people in school knows suicide is on his mind, but they also do not believe he will pull it off. Mr.Embry who is Finch’s councilor tells Violet, “I’m sorry about Finch. He was a good screwed-up kid who should have had more help.” This man is the one who had one on one sessions with Finch every week. It makes you wonder how many others are like him in the school systems and what to do to make them more aware of it. With Finch’s sarcastic personality and overdramatic comedic exterior, he further says, “We can’t always see what others don’t want us to. Especially when they go great lengths to hide it.”

The last chapter of Finch’s perspective he makes an important note that most likely made him realize that he could pull it off finally. “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” Finch recalls getting flowers for Violet, her smile and her laugh “I was my best self and she looked at me like I could do no wrong and was whole. I remember her hand in mind and how that felt, as if something and someone belonged to me.” This was the last thing Finch said to the readers which is a powerful image to leave us with. It makes aware that people who are suicidal not only have lost hope because they are alone, but because they have nothing that is worthy that belongs to them to even hold on to awhile longer. Nothing to hold on to and live for.

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