Crank

By Anonymous -
   Ellen Hopkins' novel Crank is a raging, creative interoperation of the tragedy that meth can have on the young mind and soul of a teenager. Kristina and her altar ego, Bree, battle one another's morality throughout the book and eventually, it is Bree who wins, although Kristina is still somewhat there. "Bree is / no imaginary playmate, / no overactive pituitary, / no alter ego, moving in. / Hers is the face I wear, / treading the riptide, / fathomless oceans where / good girls drown" (pg. 8.) She is present enough in her own life to be able to acknowledge the harm that meth, tobacco, and alcohol are already causing on her life and body, but she doesn't have enough power or self control to stop her habits. I think that the most tragic part of the whole book is when Kristina gives birth to a baby boy and she is still fighting the monster. In this blog post I want to talk about the harmful effects of addiction and how it influences the characters in Crank. 
   First off, there is the main character, Kristina, who is probably influenced the most by her harmful decisions. She has no idea just how badly you can need meth when you get addicted to it or how quickly it effects you. She enters this world of pain and danger by starting the drug; when she is convinced to try it for the first time, she does it to impress and enjoy time with a boy she just met. When she makes the decision to leave the dark bowling alley alone in the middle of the night, she is too high to find her way home in an area she is unfamiliar with and is nearly gang raped. The book starts off with a bad stream of decisions that never stop. It escalated so quickly, starting with the unseeingly life changing visit Kristina takes to see her absent father who lives in shabby conditions and engages in heavy alcohol consumption and frequent drug use. If anything, he supports Kristina's engagement with meth. Once she starts this habit, everything very obviously goes downhill from there. She starts having unprotected sex, gets involved in sketchy situations due to her intense need for the drug and even goes as far as stealing her mothers credit card and dealing the drug herself.
    As for Kristina's family, things are a bit more tragic. Her mother has a hard time understanding what the recent distance in her daughter is brought on by and is fairly clueless or at least fails to admit to herself that Kristina is frequently under the influence of something negative. Her family doesn't know what's wrong, but they know that there is something there that Kristina isn't sharing with them and that's very upsetting for them. Once Kristina has her child, readers want to believe that there is going to be a change in her behavior considering that she now has a higher responsibility to her child, but as we all know, she is much more loyal to the monster than anyone else. In conclusion, Hopkins did a great job at scaring me into believing that drugs truly ruin your life. You lose all respect for yourself and for those around you, no matter how important they are. Not to mention, once you get started on drugs, there is really not turning back, at least not easily. Either way, it takes a lot of time and efforts and money to keep up the habit, and even to stop it sometimes. I will never do hard drugs such as meth and I will not give up the people I love for drugs.

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