Neglect.

Author's Note: This piece was written as a reading response assignment. In it I explain a conflict and resolution from the book 'My Sister's Keeper' written by Jodi Picult.

Did you know that 20% of our world are affected by dyslexia? That one out of five people struggle day after day with reading, writing and spelling disabilities? Or that three quarters of the children who show primary difficulties with basic reading skills cannot be helped to overcome those difficulties to a great extent? Any dyslexic person, especially children, require a large amount of attention, patients and care when it comes to learning.

While reading the book My Sister’s Keeper, one of the conflicts that really stuck out to me was Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald’s lack of concern about Jesse’s mental instability.

Their son had been suffering from dyslexia his whole entire life, yet, they didn’t give him the proper attention he needed. Instead, all their interest and awareness was on their daughter, Kate, who was a cancer patient. Throughout the story, Jesse gets himself into a lot of trouble because of his frustration about having to deal with dyslexia on his own. We see him take part in self destructive activities when he comes home very late one night after smoking.

This conflict wasn’t resolved, though, until after the death of the second daughter, Anna. It was then, when this tragedy hit the family, that both Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald began to realize their neglect to their troubled son. Jesse then got the attention he needed and deserved and wound up turning his bad decision- based life around. He proceeded to graduate from the police academy in hopes to teach other teenagers, like himself, how to use proper judgment to make the right choices.

Though this may not be the biggest or most important conflict in the book, I feel that this struggle was a very interesting and stuck out to me a lot. In real life, this conflict my be even more vital to a child's lifestyle.