White Oleander by Janet Fitch
White Oleander by Janet Fitch“Without my wounds who was I?
My scars were my face, my past was my life.”
In White Oleander by Janet Fitch,the above quote perfectly describes the confusion of the main character who is desperately trying to figure out who she is in a world that has seemingly forgotten her.
The main theme of this book is self-discovery. The main character, Astrid Magnussen is trying to discover herself in extreme circumstances. She is trying to survive in a world that she feels has forgotten her. She has to figure out who she is while remembering who she was. She is trying to find a place where she belongs.
This story is about a girl named Astrid Magnussen. Her poet mother goes to jail after murdering her ex-boyfriend Barry Kolter. Astrid is forced into the strange new world of foster care. She is never sure how long she is going to be in each home and never sure what to expect. In each place she finds different families with new problems and different beliefs that she has previously experienced. She is shifted from place to place and family to family while learning important lessons from each place and learning to cope with all of the damage her mother’s beliefs has done to her life. Her mother can be a very cruel person. She is very possessive about Astrid and doesn’t want anyone else to get close to her and take her away. While in jail the words from her mother prove very damaging to Astrid. Her mother seems to be pleased when Astrid is unhappy. Astrid needs to learn who she is and how to make peace with her mother. She goes from place to place searching for an identity, searching for her past, and searching for the truth.
Believability is one of the best aspects of the book. The characters seem like they could very easily be real people with real emotions. Each one has problems that are commonly seen in today’s world. Marvel ,one of the foster mothers, is a judgmental racist. Claire, Astrid’s...
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