"Wintergirls" - The Perfectly Imperfect Ending
Wintergirls is a near perfect example of adolescent literature and an essential work for the secondary classroom. Within it, Anderson lays bear the inner workings of the anorexic mind. Through the lense of this disease she simultaneously exposes and explores adolescent concerns of inadequacy and imperfection. Anderson does not attempt to disguise the brutality of the illness or its impact on the body and mind of her main character, Lia. “I am that girl. I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through… I am the circus freak encased in beeswax. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame. When I get close, they step back” (Anderson 19). By not sugarcoating her protagonist’s illness Anderson demonstrates respect for the intellectual and social maturity of her readership which is an essential element of any YA novel. “The first incision runs from my neck to just below my heart, deep enough so that I can finally feel something, not deep enough to flay me open. The pain flows like lava and takes my breath away” (Anderson 233).
Had I not been annotating like a mad woman I could easily have gotten through the book in the space of a day or two. But this is yet another advantage of Anderson’s book that makes it a prime candidate for use in the secondary classroom. The amount of analytical meat on this proverbial literary bone provides a unique platform for students to exercise their interpretive intellectual muscles. The text contains complicated themes but doesn’t go to great lengths to bury them under laborious language or within complicated character exchanges. “I told her I was pissed because she was moving things around in my brain without permission. She booby trapped me…” (Anderson 114). The deceptively simplistic writing style is rife with investigative possibility making Wintergirls a perfect training tool for developing literary minds.
My only real criticism of the text is that it sometimes felt like Anderson was trying too hard to be poetic. “I lie down in a glass-coffin dream where rosebushes climb the walls to weave me a thorny fortress” (Anderson 227). This is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly for students or individuals who are more inclined to poetic forms of expression, but I personally found it to be distracting. After about 200 pages it simply became exhausting and I found myself having to resist the urge to simply gloss over the more artsy passages.
Additionally, I thought it was a bit odd that Anderson chose to make Lia an 18 year old. It’s unusual, at least in my experience, to have a YA protagonist that old. Particularly since I would not be inclined to teach this text to seniors (although they could certainly benefit from reading it). I personally feel the language level is more appropriate for freshmen or sophomores and had therefore anticipated a younger protagonist.
Where Anderson really knocked it out of the park with Wintergirls was with her ending. We struggle along with Lia for 278 excruciating pages. Calorie after calorie, weigh in after weigh in, we watch her self-destruct and be reborn. Anderson’s conclusion maintains a realistic perspective that offers hope but not delusional or romanticized notions of a cognitive cure. Lia finally accepts the helping hand she has snubbed since the novel’s opening page (“...My walls go up and my doors lock. I nod like I’m listening, like we’re communicating, and she never knows the difference.”) (Anderson 1). The novel ends with Lia in her third stint in rehab but “No games this time… I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles” (Anderson 275). But, even though Lia’s weight and mentality are moving towards recovery, she and the audience both know “there is no magic cure, no making it go away forever” (Anderson 278).
The threat of regression looms large as the novel is brought to a close but this is in keeping with Anderson’s approach to her work. Putting a neat bow on things and having Lia skip off into the sunset was never an option. That’s not how life works. Anderson has too much respect for her adolescent reader’s own experiences with dark realities to offend their intelligence by implying Lia has anything but a hard row to hoe ahead of her. But Anderson doesn’t leave us on an emotional ledge. She injects Lia’s final lines with budding optimism for her future, thus bringing her saga to a satisfactory conclusion. “There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn’t matter anymore. I am thawing” (Anderson 278).
Works Cited
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Wintergirls. Penguin Random House LLC, 2009.
I am so intrigued by this novel. It sounds like a great tool to get students involved in talking about serious illnesses in the classroom. It is important for students who may suffer from anorexia that they are not alone. I cannot wait to read this novel.
ReplyDeleteI really like the diction you shared. I'm always intrigued when writers write in unique ways. The author could have written a simple narrative, but got poetic with her diction. It makes a reader ask why. That's a reason I think this could be a good book for adolescents; it, as you said, would be a good source to help secondary students dive into literary analysis. I have so many questions just reading the excerpts you shared.
ReplyDeleteAnorexia is a deep subject, but is a very real illness with which many adolescents suffer. I like the idea of bringing important literature like this into the classroom to help that student who hasn't spoken out, but needs someone with which to identify. Characters can be those "people" for these students.