Blog #3 - If I Should Die Before I Wake

In the beginning of If I Should Die Before I Wake, the main character, Hilary, is waking up in an unfamiliar Jewish hospital, after a terrible motorcycle accident she was recently in. Although she was being treated and taken care of, Hilary didn’t like the fact that people in the hospital thought of her in a certain way before meeting her. Since Hilary is part of a neo-Nazi gang in her neighborhood, she proudly wears an armband, letting everyone see who she is really. “They think they know me, know all about me,” Hilary thinks, “they don’t know crap.” Whenever Hilary goes places, people probably make assumptions about her, similar to the hospital. Unlike Hilary, her mother isn’t like her at all, but kind and loving. Her mother wishes that Hilary wasn’t part of the neo-Nazi gang and was still the sweet young girl that she used to be.

While in the hospital, Hilary is suddenly transported into a life that is not her own, but instead, a young Jewish girl, Chana’s life. What Hilary went into wasn’t just an ordinary dream, but instead was actually living the life and feeling emotions that came with the different situations. Chana and her friend were walking to school, when a couple officers stopped them and forced them to work hour after hour, scrubbing floors on their hands and knees. Both Chana’s mother and neighbor were forced to scrub floors too. After being allowed to go home, she spotted her father being tormented by other officers because he couldn’t do what they were asking. Although the officers learned that her father had a heart condition, it didn’t make them any more caring, instead, they made Chana do it in replace of her father. Since her father couldn’t do easy labor like digging, the officers probably thought that he would be no use in other labor jobs, so they shot him without any emotion at all.

The whole transported into another life is very mysterious, how did it happen? Was it an effect of the accident Hilary was recently in? Is it a dream? A fantasy? Hilary is very confused with the whole situation and doesn’t really know what to think of it. One minute she is in the hospital and the next she’s in Chana’s world. The two times Hilary has transported, the last person she saw was Grandmaw. Is Grandmaw the cause of these mysterious happenings? Are these dreams trying to teach Hilary a life lesson? In one of President Obama’s many speeches, he stated, “…the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us…” I think this is relevant to the situation Hilary is in. Hilary is seeing life in a different point of view, the life Chana lives.

So far in the story, the two protagonists are Hilary and Chana. The two girls both live two very different lives. Hilary hates Jewish people and thinks all of them should die where as Chana is a Jewish girl, wishing that none of this was happening. Will Hilary ever learn to accept Jewish people and realize they aren’t that bad?