Diseases

In the book Riptide by Michael Prescott, the whole main point of plot of the book is based on the frequent topic of schizophrenia. The main character Jennifer has a brother with schizophrenia. Her father had schizophrenia and her grandfater. In the book, she found a diary of  women hater/killer "Jack the Ripper" who would kill only women and would cut them open and disbowel them. She is psychologist in the police force and she distingushes the crimminals behave and actions due to the writing and hard evidence found. While reading the diary she discovered Edward Hare-Jack- also had schizo. After Richard was born, her father took a gun and comitted sucide. Jen was nervous that Richard would become violent and soon act like the other two in her family. But she discovers that Richard never does kill, but when he was paranoid, he did get violent and that scared Jen at first. But she realized as violent as he may get, he won't kill.

I think Prescott chose a character close to the m.c. to have this dibilitating disease because he wanted not only to let the plot thicken but also to warn his readers about this disease. How schizo is not something that you can just brush off. It can be potentially dangerous and risky. Some cases are mild, not all are bad but some can be dangerous. You can't always be sure that someone with schizo isn't going to be dangerous. Especially if they don't take their pills, like Richard stopped taking his when he started to feel paranoid. That's when he started to get violent. He went from a mild case b/c of the pills to a dangerous case where he had Sandra at knife point. Of course he didn't kill her or hurt her but i bet that if he had gone longer without taking his pills or if something else freaked him out, he might have just killed her. You can never know for sure how dangerous or mild a case of schizo may be, no matter what a doctor says.

I think the whole point of adding in a dibilitating disease like schizo was to warn readers and thicken the plot but to also show that over all, all emotional based diseases might be dangerous and you shoudl be cautious around whoever has something like that. Not saying that you shoudl treat them like babies, but just always keep in the back of your head that this person has a disease and that it may be dangerous. But it's not with all disease-Breast Cancer for example, how does that pose a threat to other in a harmful way? I mean diseases like schizo, i know there are some like schizo but i can't think of the names. I also think that someone close to him, a female figure in his life, was hurt either emotionally by a disease or person, or physcially by a person. All his m.c.'s so far have been female and bothered and attacked by male figures. Maybe he witnessed or knew someone with any problems like that, or there was no connection and he just wanted to write about it. But point being, diseases are nothing to brush off and hold off on, some can be harmful to others or even yourself.

Sacrifices

There are a couple of things in Litte Girl Gone by Brett Battles that caught my attention. Sacrifices is one. Like when Sein was going to trade herself  for her daughter, Elsye.  The kidnappers (really from Burma government) wanted that. They figured they would get the women out of states and kill her. Logan realized what was going to happen and put a stop to it. He realized what point of freeing Elsye was good for her.  The gov. officials would get who they wanted and would shut her up forever. Now, Elsye would be motherless. How would that be good? When Sein first thought of the plan, it sounded good. Heck, it would even sound good to me. But, the result, the consequence Elsye would still be paying for. She would lose her mother and blame herself for being kidnapped, and probably do what Sein did when she lost her mother. Step into the empty shoes her mother once had on. Sein reminds alot like Logan actually. Logan  goes to war alongside his brother-in-law Carl. But Carl gets shot and sees a litte girl run into the cross fire and demanded in his shallow breaths for Logan to go after her. He reluctantly does and brings her back to her family and returns to Carl.  But Carl dies a few minutes after. Logan found out that the little girl also died later on due to a bullet that landed in her abdomen.

The difference between these two characters were the results. Sein and Elsye both lived while Carl and the little girl died. Either way Logan would have probably lost Carl. But that little girl, the little girl who Elsye reminded me of. She didn't mean to be born, but when she was, she was  in the "cross-fire" between her mother and the Burma Government. I think that's what pushed Logan so far to save Elsye and her mother. Carl knew he would die if Logan left him, he sacrificed himself for the little girl, much like what Sein wanted to do. He went after them because he pictured Carl "on" Tooney. He knew saving Elsye can't make up for hte little girl who died, but i eased his mind. Evenm though it was a different little girl, Logan truly saved a little girl,-she survived.

There was also something about what happened at war with Carl, the little girl and Logan. Everyone had blamed him for Carl's death. Trish walked out on  him and he lost his job. Many people acted as if they saw Carl die. Nobody but Logan saw him slip away. HE is the only one with a mental picture of that. Nobody cared if he was hurting just like everybody else, they only added onto his burden. He wondered about all the ifs, what if i didn;t go after the girl, what if i left Carl and i got shot, what if... In a sense he hid that from everyone. His doubts, his what ifs, his guilt. Nobody would listen to him anyway. They judged and fibbed about what they heard. There were two parts from the war story. Logan's, and what people believed, or wanted to believe. There were two sides of feelings to the story. Logan's and the people. Sometimes people judge without knowing all the facts. Someone is tough and hardcore. You assume they're bad and mean. Don't judge until you know BOTH sides from a story and know which is truth and lie. Don;t be like the people who didn't care about Logan, who didn't take the time to sit down and listen.