Lauren Oliver explores our wistful desire to go back in time and fi x our mistakes in her novel, “Before I Fall,” which was voted Best Young Adult Fiction by the Goodreads Choice Awards.
The novel follows a day in the life of 17-year-old Samantha Kingston, a popular, pretty girl who is a member of her high school’s “mean girl” clique.
Sam goes about her day as she normally does; her best friends Lindsay, Elody and Ally pick her up for school, she shuts down the nerd Kent’s advances, Lindsay persuades her to bully the school outcast Julia Sykes, and she finishes the day by attending a local party with her friends. Samantha’s night ends tragically when the car she is riding in crashes, leaving her dead. So how can the story go on when the protagonist has already been killed off within the first 80 pages?
Miraculously, Sam wakes up the next morning, except it is not really the next morning. Sam yet again wakes up on Feb. 12, the same day she is destined to die. Sam relives her last day alive for a full week, hoping to make the lifestyle changes she should have made when they still mattered.
The reader watches as Sam tries to change her fate within the next seven days.
At first she makes small attempts at being a better person, although they do not warrant much change at all. She even avoids going to the party to avoid the car crash completely, but when she safely goes to bed, she once again wakes up to relive Feb. 12th.
Sam then becomes angry at her inability to escape the vicious cycle and takes it out on her friends, family and anyone who crosses her path. She uses another one of her resurrections to live recklessly, seeing no point in actually caring about what happens because she is dead and nothing matters anyways.
The next day, however she tries a different approach and takes the time to understand the people she bullied, spend quality time with her younger sister who she normally ignored and finally give in to her developing feelings for Kent.
On the seventh day, the day that will finally be her last, Sam must make sure she lives with no regrets because her life is not the only one at stake. “Before I Fall” can be classified as more of a novel for teens, but there is a reason for why it is one of my favorite books. At the beginning of the novel, the reader hates Samantha for her inability to do the right thing and stand up not only for others, but for herself. The reader may even feel a sense of justice when Sam dies in the car accident, thinking that she had it coming all along.
Before Sam continues her week- long journey of the last day of her life, she poses a question to the reader: “Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does? Is it really so much worse than what you do?”
As the reader progresses through the novel, it is easy to think back on all of the times you mistreated someone, disrespected your parents or failed to speak up at a critical moment.
“Before I Fall” teaches the lesson that people often forget: how much our actions truly do affect the people around us, and how we must change our poor attitudes and our treatment of others before it is too late.
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