Bookreport
on 21st
of April,2000
Go Ask Alice is a story about
a drugaddict teenager and her attemts to escape from them.
GO ASK ALICE (summary)
Alice started writing her
diary shortly before her 15th birthday, because her boyfriend broke
up with her and she felt really down, unpopular, ugly and missunderstood by everybody
even by her parents. She decided to change and started to exercise every
morning and eat healthy. Later on, her dad had been invited to become the Dean
of Political Science in another city and the whole family had to move there.
Alice was very scared of her new life in a new city, she was wondering how she
was going to make it up in a new school with new kids. Finally the first
schoolday arrived and it was like she had it always expected. Nobody talked to
her during the whole endlessly long day and during the lunch period she fled to
the nurse`s office and said she had a headache just to stay away from the crowd
of kids. Time went by and she kept being alone without friends she didn`t
bother about her look anylonger and felt rotten.One day she met a girl on her
way from school, who was really good looking but very shy. The two girls became
best friends, they shared everything together, problems, joy and all the stuff
girls talk about when they are alone. In the summer holidays Alice visited her
grandparents, she had a very good releationship with them, even better than
with her parents. She was delightfully surprised as Jill, who never talked to
her before or even knew that she existed, invited Alice to a Party at her place.
Alice was so happy she could cry, the party was great everybody seemed to be
really nice and friendly. Jill winked at Alice and told her that they were
going to play a game called "Button! Button! Who has the Button?" Alice didn´t
know what that means but she was afraid to expose herself if she would ask. All
the kids got a bottle of coke and they had to drink it, so did Alice but
suddenly she began to feel something strange inside herself it felt like a
storm. The only thing she could remember was that first she thought the kids at
the party wanted to poison her, but then she remembered Bill Thomson saying: "
enjoy your trip, I`ll take care of you." For the first time in her life she
felt completely uninhibitited, when she began to come down she was told that 10
of the 14 bottles of coke contained LSD. From now on she began to date Bill and
take drugs regularly, because she was curious at the effect of different drugs.
After Gramps had had a heart attack Alice began to cool down, she stayed at
home helping with the cooking and so on. She decided to trip a last time before
going home and never try drugs again, so she went to Bill`s place where already
were other kids and took one last trip on acid, well the trace of it was, she
lost her virginity. One day before going home she met Roger, her first and only
true love, again, with whom she built up a friendship even through she lived in
an other city. Back home she took Dexies to to stay high at school and at work
and on dates, then she had to take tranquilizers to bear up at home. She met
Chris and the two became best friends they had even taken the same job and she
first tried pot with her. The two met Ted and Richi who were already in
college, they got stoned tougether nerly every night and Alice fell in love
with Rich she even sold drugs to junior high school kids for him. As Alice
realized that she wasn`t the one and only girl in his life she stopped selling
and turned Richi to the police. They decided it would be impossible to change
while they were in this city so they went to cut out and go to San Francisco.
After hard work of searching for a job both of them found a job in shops.The
owners of the shops were very understanding and nice. Shelia the boss of Chris
invited them to a party, Alice couldn`t resist and took drugs again but this
time she tried heroin and as a result she got raped without knowing it . She
and Chris quit their jobs and found a new appartment which they designed inside
by themselves and a lot of kids visited them regularly, but by the time Alice
got homesick and called her parents to pick her up and returned back home,
everything seemed to be great a happy new year party, a lot of fun and a loving
family. All the problems started when Alice has to go to school again, she was
pulled down by the teachers and kids no one believed she was clean so she got
one more time by group pressure into drugtaking. After the police raided
Chris`s house, Alice`s parents became worried they started to babysit Alice as
if she was a small child they even didn`t let her go to the bathroom alone. The
Pressure at home was so big that she couldn`t stand it any longer and fled to
Oregon with some other kids who were also drug addicted. In Coos Bay she met
Doris, a 14 year old girl who was raped by her stepfather and her brothers, she
seemed to know everybody here, she turned Alice to baby prostitution, by the
time she got more turned on girls then on boys. After she had discussed the
Problems with some kids who were stoned she went to a church and talked to a priest
who called her parents and Alice decided to return home and wante to start work
as a social worker to help drug addicted kids to solve their problems without
drug taking.She promised to her self to stay off drugs. From this moment on she
had a very hard life, ther were two groups of kids at her school one of them
were the kids who never took drugs and hadn`t even thought of it and the other
one was the doper gang who started to manipulate Alice.Alice began to study a
lot just to stay at home and prove that she can manage it to be good at school
again and also to prove herself that she can mange without drugs. She started
to go the university library where she met Joel. They met every day at the
library and got very familiar to eachother but Alice didn`t tell him the whole
truth about her former life. A big effect on her further life and her mental
constitution had the death first of her grandpa and then of her grandma. She
couldn`t put up with the situation and suffered from the thought how the dead
bodies of her loving grandparents were eaten by the worms. She was also blamed
by the drug gang that the police raided their last party, and arrested some of
them. From now on she her life turned into a nightmare. The kids swore to
avenge themselves on her , she was pursued by them offended and abused. Nobody
talked to her anymore and by the time the drug gang seemded to loose interest
on her. In the holidays she started to babysit at a friend`s house but
something had happened, she didn`t know what she only knew that she woke up in
a hospital and a lot of worms crawled on her body, her hands had combustions
and she had bleak places on her head. She could remember eating some peanuts
then she felt sick an saw her grandfather in all colours. He tried to help her but
his body was eaten by worms wich crowled over on her. After a two weeks Alice
was released from the hospital she got a new hair cut to hide her bleak places
on her head and the doctor said that her hands will get totally ok doubtlessly
in a year. But that wasn`t the end of the bad dream, some kids from the drug
gang had turned her to the police for selling drugs to them and she was sent to
an insane asylum. It was the worst thing in her life, she had to accept that
she had a problem to go to school. She talked to the kids there about their
problems and why they got there. She found a friend with whom she spent most of
her time. Finally her parents get her out of that hole by resud the gang to
signe Alice had never sold drugs to them. At her birthday she was surprised by
Joel, she was really in love with him. She decided she was now old enough to
discuss her problems with human beings and didn`t need to keep a diary any
longer. Three weeks after her decision not to keep a diary, Alice died of an
overdose.
Alice is a typical teenager
going through her teenager years, all teenagers have the same problems it only
depends on the parents and on the children themselves how they are going to
manage their problems. It is easier for people who are selfconfident than for
kids who are afraid of telling their problems and talking to other people.
Alice is a kid who suffers from her loneliness and taciturnness. Sometimes she
sees her problems but she doesn`t want to change or she wants to change but she
can`t because she is not selfconfident enough to look in the mirror and say:
"That`s me! I´m as I´m and the others have to accept me like that!" The only
way make her to feel good is to take drugs.She escapes from her world into an
other dimension which makes her forget her problems and makes her feel free,
only there she can behave as she wants to. If you read her diary you can see
how she feels only by reading the words she uses. While she was in Oregon her
Language became very rough, and she uses words which are mostly used only on
the street. She had accepted that she has a problem and she would wish to live
a life like other kids but she is not strong enough to keep off drugs so she
needs several tries before she finally kept off drug taking, but the drug gang
got afraid that she could go to the police or they were just jealous that she
could resist the temptation. So they tried to get her off their way or turn her
in again. Alice is a very naive person, she needs somebody who can listen to
her and share his problems with her, because Alice is a very understanding
person but she got used several times so she needs a friend who would never try
to use her for his own advantages. Such people are hard to find but in the end
she found some one whom she could trust but it was already to late for her. The
mistake her parents made was that they hadn`t seen her problem as something
important they thought she could manage it on her own so they didn`t try hard
to help her or to talk to her. When they firs reallized that she had big problems
with the students in her school they should have let her live with her
grandparents or move to an other city where she could visit another school and
build up a new reputation, they missed this chynce and their daughter.
The problems of the kids with
whom Alice has spoken seem to be the same. Most of them ran away from home
because they had troubles with their parents, were raped or just because their
parents naged them, the most reason was that the parents wanted them to do things the didn´t want, because of
such small misunderstanding they ruined their lives.
