More and More and More -- Crank -- Lindsey

I read Crank when I was around 14. My mom didn’t believe in censorship of anything, and I was allowed to read, watch, listen to what I wanted. It benefitted me in more ways than I can count, and I thank her for building my reading and language skills by exposing me to things above my head. I was very young, and the content of this book was very heavy, but that fact alone made the images more stark and staying. As I reread the book for this class, the images and the mood from when I was 14 were recreated. I think that is the power of books told in verse. Simple lines and concrete details lead to powerful, clear responses from the reader. The cliché would be that less is more, but I think Crank exemplifies that saying. The verse moves quickly, readers are propelled through the lines, and the plot sneaks up on you as you read. There is no getting bogged down by unnecessary words. Each word, or simple string of words, is chosen precisely by Hopkins to convey just the right tone, the right mood, the right image. The poem in which I think this is most evident is “I Became an Instant Celebrity”, because it uses many poetic devices, and because it is a turning point for Kristina/Bree. Kristina/Bree talks about how she is now selling the drug, and Hopkin uses repetition and rhetorical questions to take the reader through the emotions of actions of her day-to-day existence. Of course, repetition isn’t a groundbreaking strategy to use in poetry or prose, but when combined with the knowledge that this book is written for adolescents, I think Hopkins morphs the strategy in a way that will mimic closely what Kristina/Bree is doing, and make it more accessible to the reader. The repetition of rhetorical questions makes Kristina/Bree’s foreshadowing clear. We know at once that something is about to happen that causes her to “quit” because she’s suddenly unclear about the “what ifs” if she had continued using. The repetition of “nonstop” mirrors the effect of being “wired” and “tired” because both of those actions are “nonstop”, like the use of the word “nonstop”. The same applies for the repetition of the word “more”. Kristina/Bree needed “more and more”, and Hopkins wrote the words literally more and more. The final line of this poem is the most important element. The very simple fragment “But it wasn’t.” delivers a punch that reverberates throughout the rest of the novel. The symmetry, also, between mentioning her “mom’s Sloppy Joes” and the foreshadowing of Kristina/Bree’s pregnancy directly reflects the fact that the real story of the real daughter is being written by her own mother. If one were to think about this story and envision it in typical, detailed, novel-style prose, I would imagine the plot would become unbearably hard to digest. The style of verse allows the author to include certain, specific details, and gloss over others. The impact, then, is more like a single but brutal punch to the nose, instead of a head-on collision; direct, painful, and to-the-point.