English Book report: Go ask Alice by Anonymous

Summary:

Alice is a 15 year old girl who starts a diary on September the 16th. She writes about school and about Roger, the boy she likes very much, but who pays no attention to her. Alice also has problems with her weight; she thinks she is very fat, but in fact she is not. When her father gets a new job Alice likes the idea to move to another town, but when the day of moving comes near, she is afraid that the people won't like her. She was right, it takes Alice a long time to make friends.

In May she met her first 'real' friend, Beth Baum, a Jewish girl. During the summer holidays Alice spent time with her grandparents in her 'old' town. She met Jill Peters, an old friend, and she is invited to a party. They play the game 'Button, button, where is the button' when Alice got a coke with LSD in it. At first she does not know what was going on but she liked it very much. She met Bill at the party and she got drugs from him several times and she lost her virginity on one of her 'trips'.

The relationship between Alice and her parents got worse. Alice met Chris in a boutique. Chris gives Alice drugs and offered her a job in the boutique. When Alice falls in love with Richie, a pusher, at a party, she began dealing drugs for Richie. When Chris and Alice find out Richie and Chris's boyfriend Ted just used them to deal drugs Alice and Chris run away to San Francisco. Before Alice leaves she writes a note to her parents and a note for the police about Richie and Ted. In San Francisco Chris and Alice promise each other not to take drugs anymore, but at a party they use LSD again. They also try heroin and are sexually abused at another party. When they start a jewelry shop on their own they again decide not to take drugs anymore.

In December Alice and Chris got homesick and they returned to their families. Alice's family welcomed her with a lot of love and Alice has a happy Christmas. Alice is clean, but the drug-users at her school do not leave Alice alone. Chris started to take drugs again and Alice did too, they cannot resist it anymore. One evening the police came by and found drugs at Chris's house. Alice and Chris told their parents they have not used them, but Alice's parents watch her closely and send her to a psychiatrist. Alice cannot stand her parents watching her all day so she runs away from home again.

She goes to Denver and after that to Coos Bay in Oregon. She sleeps in a park and gets food from social workers. When she catches a cold she has to go to the doctor, where she meets Doris, a 14 year old drug-user who has got a room. Doris invites Alice to come and live in her room. Together they travel through South California. Alice gets very confused by being high whole day long; she does not know the date, she does not know the year, she does not know anything anymore. She often stays in a church where she talks to a priest. At last he helps her by calling her parents, who come to take her home.

She promises again not to take drugs anymore and to start a new life. She even starts a new diary for her new life. This time she seems very self-confident. Alice has hallucinations where she sees worms and maggots all over her. This is caused by the death of her grandparents-she is imagining how they look like when they are dead and buried. Alice goes back to school and some drug-using children are bugging her because she is clean, especially a girl named Jan. Alice feels very lonely because she has no friends and she gets nightmares about worms and maggots slowly eating her. She thinks she is going crazy.

Alice studied very hard to catch up with the other students and just to forget she was so lonely. When she is studying in the library she meets Joel Reems and they become close friends. When Alice is baby-sitting one night Jan drops by. She is stoned and is behaving very wildly. Alice phones Jan's parents because she does not want Jan to wake the baby. At school Alice is been called names by Jan's friends because in their eyes Alice had betrayed Jan. In the meantime Alice's dreams about worms and maggots get worse. Just before the summer holidays Alice tells Joel she had been using drugs and he is very understanding, just like Alice hoped him to be.

Alice wakes up in a hospital-her hands are badly injured and hair was ripped off her head, but she does not know what happened to her. But then she remembered she was baby-sitting and she ate some candy she thought they had left it to her for the evening, but someone had put an overdose of drugs in it. Alice totally 'tripped', it was a 'trip' full of worms and maggots. Alice was being eaten by the worms and the maggots. She tried to get them off her and yelled. The neighbours called the police and locked Alice in a closet. When she took her out Alice had ripped off some of her hair and had badly injured her hands, her head and the rest of her body by trying to get off the worms and maggots.

After Alice had recovered for a while she is taken to a mental hospital. She is afraid and does not like the atmosphere and the people, she wants to get out as quick as possible. There are a lot of children who are there because of using drugs, like Babbie, the girl next to her 'cell', and Tom, a 15 year old drug-user. Alice's parents believed what she was telling about the whole incident and they are trying to get her out of there as quick as possible. At the end of the summer Alice got out and she went home again. For the remaining weeks of the summer holidays she went on vacation with her family, but she misses Joel very much. After the vacation Alice made friends with Fawn and a few other people. Everything is going very well with Alice. On her birthday Joel came by and Alice felt that she was really growing up and decided grown ups don't keep diaries. She stopped writing in her diary one day after her birthday. It seemed like a happy ending. Everybody was happy. Alice was finally happy with herself and finally saw the joy of life. But in the epilogue is said Alice died three weeks after the last entry in her diary by an overdose of drugs. Nobody knows exactly what happened and nobody knows exactly why it happened.

(1165 words)

Title explanation:

The title Go ask Alice is well chosen because in the book Alice says several times she wants to be a social worker and help children with their drugs problems. She thinks she can do it and will be good at it and because she has been there too, she will understand them better then someone who has not been on drugs so much. You can go ask Alice, because she has been there too, she will understand you. I found another explanation too. 'Go ask Alice' is a line from the song 'White rabbit', a hit in 1967 for the group Jefferson Airplane, musicians who used drugs themselves. In the song a girl named Alice knows the solutions to many problems, because she is a drug addict.

Main characters:

Alice is the real main character. She is the writer of the diary. She is 15 years old and died when she just turned 17. Her name is not known or mentioned in the book so they gave her the name Alice. She is not very self-confident in the beginning of the story; she is not very happy with her weight and it takes a long time to find new friends when they move to another city. After she met a lot of people and does a lot of things she learned very much. She is really grew up during the story. She got a lot of life experience which gave her more self-confidence. In the end everything was going well. She finally got what she wanted and she finally turned her back on drugs. And then she dies…

Alice's family is also very important. Her mother was, according to Alice, always bugging her about everything, that is one of the reasons why Alice didn't have much self-confidence. Alice's father is a university professor who he loved her very much and was always trying to do the best he could to please Alice. He was the one who worked very hard to get Alice out of the mental hospital. Alexandria was Alice's little sister who was very sweet and Alice often wants to be like Alex because she had no problems like herself. Tim was Alice's little brother. At first she thought he was very irritating, but during the story she found out that she can speak with him about a lot of things. He was a very helpful little brother. The whole family was very nice to her each time Alice came home after she ran away. Her family suppored her very much.

Alice's grandparents where also very important. Alice loved her Gran and Gramps very much and Alice iwas, I think, the one who missed them the most when they both died. When Alice was thinking about being dead she thought about worms and maggots eating the dead people. Because of the drugs she hallucinatined about the worms and maggots and when she got the overdose she saw the worms and maggots eating her and that is why she injured herself so badly.

All the people she meets during the story where important for Alice. Roger was the boy she loved at the begin of the story. At a party of Jill Peters, a schoolmate from her old school, she got in contact with drugs for the first time. Gerta, Beth and Fawn where her new friends at her new school. Jan and Marcie where drug-users at her new school. Richie and Ted where pushers and Alice fell in love with Richie. Bill, Joe, Lane and Jacky where also drug-users at her new school, but they where not very important for the rest of the story. Chris was the girl who went to San Francisco with Alice. Mario Mellani was Alice's employer in San Francisco. Sheila was Chris's employer in San Francisco. Doris was a drug-user who Alice lived with in Coos Bay, Oregon. Joel Reems was the student that Alice hoped to marry. Babbie and Tom where young drug-users who Alice met in the mental hospital.

Theme(s):

The main theme is drugsbecause actually the whole story-the whole book is about Alice and drugs. The reader sees everything from the eyes of Alice and can learn from it. You can see what drugs can do with you as told by someone who has used them.

Genre:

The story is told in the form of a diary. The story starts on September the 16th and the last entry is on September the 21st two years later. It also could be a psychological novel because the story is about all the feelings and emotions of Alice. It even could be an autobiographic story because it is a part of the life of Alice. I think it is a very realistic story because it is written by someone who has been there herself and I think this is the most realistic way to write a story about this subject.

Time and place:

Alice is a member of a middle-class family. They live in the western part of America because Alice is went to San Francisco and Oregon and those locations are on the West Coast of America. I do not know exactly where the story takes place because the names of the towns they live in are not mentioned. The story takes place in the 1960s because the book was published two years after Alice's death in 1972.

Something about the author:

Go ask Alice is based on a real diary of a girl who died at the age of 17 and they still do not know exactly what happened and why it happened. They think it was an overdose of drugs. The name of the girl is not mentioned in the book, but she is called Alice. There is too much to tell about her because the whole book is about her.

Opinion:

I enjoyed reading this book very much. I liked the way it is written. I can imagine why she is doing all this because she is my age. I think it was very good to read a book like this because this is real. In this book you get to know the truth from somebody who has been through all of it. I have read other books about this subject but they were all written by people who have not been there and I think this is a book which surpasses all the other books on realism. I liked the book because after reading just a few lines I was back in the story and I think that is the power of a good book. I heard other people who thought it was not a good book but I think they are wrong. I was really caught by the way it was written and the story-lines. I really liked reading it.

Optional assignment:

I have chosen for a different ending because I think the end of the book ruins the rest of the book.
After Alice's birthday Joel had to leave again but he promised her he'd be back soon. Alice felt finally free-she is free from drugs, she finally has clean friends and Joel is the most adorable thing on earth and he is her boyfriend. Everything is going well-she even got permission to baby-sit again by the family where it went so completely wrong. The people in school are still bugging her but it does not bother her anymore. She thinks she is the happiest person in the whole world. She wants to get married as soon as possible with Joel, but her parents think they both have to finish their school before they get married and Alice and Joel agreed with it.
The years flew by and Alice has graduated from her university and Joel is working already because he has finished his university a few years before Alice did. They still want to get married and finally they do. And they live happy ever after…