Noor Ismail
ELA, Timand
Book Report
3/14/2011
For May
In the book “Just Listen” by Sarah Dessen it talks about Annabel Greene’s school and family life. One of the main themes of the novel was that people aren’t always what they seems also that honesty is the best policy. Annabel Greene looked like the perfect girl, the one who had everything including a glass looking house. She was a model, a popular girl, with the perfect family. It all begins to fall apart when her sister Whitney almost dies from anorexia. Then, when Annabel’s best friend Sophie accuses Annabel of trying to sleep with her boyfriend, when he really tried to rape her, things changed forever.
When Annabel returns to school the next year, everyone shuts her out. She begins to eat lunch alone on the wall outside, with only Owen, another outcast, sitting near her. One day, when Sophie causes a nasty scene, Owen finally talks to Annabel and offers to take her home. They strike up a friendship and have deep conversations about music, which Owen is really passionate about and even has his own radio station. “Music is the greater unit. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.” (pg. 96) Things start to get better for Annabel: she and Owen are a couple and Whitney is recovering. “As he leaned down to kiss me, I closed my eyes and saw not the flat black of the dark but something else. Something brighter, closer to light, shining small but ever steady. More than enough to go on as a part of me pushed up and out, finally, to meet it there.” (pg. 363)
The Essay on The Literary Elements of “Annabel Lee”
In the Poem “Annabel Lee” by Edger Allen Poe, there are a couple of literary devices used. Poe uses these devices to explain the ultimate love between Annabel and the Narrator. One literary device that is used is the biblical reference to the angels of Heaven. Another is the use of nature to explain the effect that Annabel’s death had on the land. Poe uses the combination of biblical metaphors and ...
When Emily is almost raped by the same person as Annabel, Will. “Despite the thick make-up, they were still rimmed, haunted, and sad. Most of all, though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I’d spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.” (pg.251) Here she was getting of the fashion runway as Emily was coming on. Annabel is upset, and after seeing Owen band at a club on a date later that day, she runs off, leaving Owen wondering what happened to her. He is furious and they didn’t talk for months. “When I got to my own face, I found myself staring at it, so bright with dark all around it, like it was someone I didn’t recognize. Like a word on a page that you’ve printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign, and you feel scared for a second, like you’ve lost something, even if you’re not sure what it is.” (pg. 269-270)
However, at home, things are getting better. Whitney is almost completely recovered, and she reconciles with the sister that revealed her eating disorder. Annabel begins to become friends with her old best friend after a long separation, and finally decides she needs to tell Owen why she left.
She finds him at the radio station where he does a show, and after a lot of persuading tells him what happened. He convinces her to testify in his upcoming trial. After testifying, things get much better for Annabel, and she is to conclude happy again. “It was bright and warm, catching the ring on my thumb as Owen reached for it, spinning it slowly, slowly, as the song played on.” (last pg.371)
Questions:
1. Why does the author choose to have SO MANY details?
2. What happens to Whitney? Sophie?
3. Does Annabel’s mother ever recover from her depression? (caused by her mothers death)
