My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult: A look at the unfathomable line between good and evil
My Sister’s Keeper
My Sister’s Keeper is about the Fitzgerald family. The story revolves around Sara and Brian Fitzgerald whose second born child Kate, was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia at age two. The oldest child Jesse, was not a genetic match to Kate. Therefore he could not donate any bone marrow or blood to Kate. With the help of a doctor Sara and Brian were able to conceive Anna; who was a perfect genetic match to Kate. Over the course of the next few years, Anna undergoes several procedures, including frequent blood withdrawals and a painful bone marrow extraction, to help keep Kate alive. The present action of the story begins on a Monday. Thirteen year old Anna goes to see a lawyer named Campbell Alexander and asks him to represent her. Anna tells Campbell that she wants to sue her parents for medical emancipation. Kate, her sister, is in the end stages of kidney failure, and Anna wants to file the lawsuit so she will not have to donate a kidney to Kate. When she is served with the papers for the lawsuit, Sara becomes furious with Anna as she cannot understand Anna’s decision. Brian, however, understands Anna’s point of view to a degree and recognizes that she would not have brought a lawsuit unless she were genuinely unhappy.
Kate becomes seriously ill and must be hospitalized. Dr. Chance says she will die within a week. Anna refuses to change her mind about the lawsuit, however. At the hearing, Sara decides she will represent herself and Brian.At the trial, both Sara and Campbell question witnesses, including one of the doctors familiar with Kate’s medical history. Reluctantly, Anna takes the stand and admits that she filed the lawsuit because Kate told her to. Anna explains that Kate asked Anna not to donate her kidney because she was tired of being sick and waiting to die. Anna also admits that while she loves her sister, part of her wanted Kate to die, too, so that she could have more freedom with her life.
Judge DeSalvo decides to grant Anna medical emancipation and gives Campbell medical power of attorney over her.On the way to the hospital, Campbell and Anna get into a serious car accident. At the hospital, the doctors tell the family that Anna has irreversible brain damage. Campbell tells the doctors to give Anna’s kidney to Kate. Kate narrates the epilogue. She discusses the grief her family went through after Anna’s death, and the fact that she blames herself.
My Sister’s Keeper has different themes presented throughout the story. But, the one most prominent is that there is an ambiguous line between right and wrong.
This is illustrated in the story through Anna’s wish to put her own interests first; specifically to live independently of Kate and to stop serving involuntarily as Kate’s donor and her incompatible desire to put Kate’s interest first. The trial, which takes up a considerable portion of the novel’s plot, centers on resolving this conflict. For most of the trial’s length no easy distinction can be made between which is right and which is wrong. Anna has no legal obligation to donate her kidney, which would require surgery and carries a risk of health problems. Yet without Anna’s kidney, which Anna can live without, Kate will die. Several of the characters struggle throughout the book to determine which is the right solution, with different characters arguing different sides of the point, but no one can come up with an argument that settles the issue completely. Only when Anna reveals Kate’s wish to die, making it clear that even Kate does not want Anna’s kidney, does Judge DeSalvo issue a ruling.
