Novel shows that it’s never too late to change for the better
Print Edition
Some of my classmates recommended I read the novel “Before I Fall” by Lauren Oliver. It tells the powerful and compelling story of a teenage girl named Samantha. Although she dies in a car accident, she wakes up in the morning, and finds herself reliving the same day. She relives her last day for seven days, unravels the mystery of her death and realizes that by making the smallest changes, she can save another life as well as her own. In the end, she thinks a lot about her life before and how it wasn’t as perfect as it seemed. The experience makes her change for the better.
To be honest, I did not entirely enjoy reading the book at first. At first glance, Sam was a self-absorbed and egotistical teenager who didn’t care about anyone below her status. She had a superficially perfect life, which I hated. She even said that “It’s nice that everything was easy” for her. But as I delved further into the book, I found that my emotions changed towards most of the characters, from anger to compassion, from frustration to affection.
Throughout the book, it’s Sam’s personality that grows and changes the most. Every time she relives the same day, she looks at her life from a different perspective. After finding out that the girl they tormented and bullied at school committed suicide, she comes to acknowledge the ugly truth: that she is a horrible person.
Sam doesn’t realize the state of things right away. It takes her quite a bit of time to change, to learn from her mistakes, and to make corrections. She struggles and tries her best. Eventually, Sam comes to the understanding that it’s never too late to change. I think that this is the moral of the story; at times, changes might come late, but they do come.
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