Parallels

After reading the Help, I got into a sort of book depression. Nothing else matched up to the greatness of it, and I didn't know what to do. At this point, I was reading My Antonia for novels class, which was an extremely boring book, and was just bummed out. Then I chose to read "River, Cross My Heart." It is a book written during the same time as the Help, but from a much different circumstance. In this one, a little girl dies in a river under her older sister's watch. The story tells about how the older sister, mother, and rest of the town are struck by her sudden death. The older sister, her name is Johnnie Mae, falls into a deep depression where she doesn't even want to move. She is so overcome with nightmares and dreams that her neighbor gets the town herbal remedy provider to make her a "concoction" to help her get sleep.

I can't imagine having my brother die when I was supposed to be watching him. I don't often have to take him along when I go and hang out with my friends. But that is what Johnnie Mae has to do all day, everyday. Johnnie Mae sees her sister drowning in the river and tries to dive over and over and over to find her sister's body and pull her to the surface, but she cannot find it. This river is said to be haunted in a way. The town refers to it as the Three Sisters because 3 sisters, nuns, were said to have drowned in the river and now take prisoners by their ankles whenever someone goes swimming. Most know not to swim in the river, and so does Clara, the youngest sister. However, when standing on a log over the river, the log breaks and she falls in. This seems to always happen in movies! Someone walks a little too close to a steep edge hanging over a 500 foot drop, and suddenly the rocks break beneath them. Or maybe a person is walking backwards and doesn't see the drop-off behind them and falls to their death. Who knows. I just know that it happens a lot and its very predictable.

Speaking of predictability, I was sitting watching Parenthood the other night on NBC, AMAZING show for any of you who don't watch it. Well one daughter on the show is around 17 and she is dating a guy who is about 22, but is a recovering alcoholic. Sweet, sweet guy. He has totally turned his life around. Anyways, Hattie, the 17 year old, wants to go to this high school party and she wants her boyfriend to come along, but her little brother suggests that Alex shouldn't go because if there is going to be alcohol there, that would be bad for him. The little brother's name is Max and he has Aspergers and is crazy intelligent and lacks a filter to tell him what is appropriate to say to others. Ok, the application is coming, I promise! So Alex decides that he isn't going to go, but he will pick Hattie up at the party and they can hang out afterwards. OF COURSE the rest of the story line is predictable. Hattie gets totally wasted, Alex comes in to get her, and has to punch a drunk guy who won't let Hattie leave. You just know that if something is telling you that something is bad, bad, bad, that someway, somehow, someone is going to get tangled up in that mess.

Anyways, its just interesting to see how different story lines overlap, but go in completely different directs with the rest of the story line, but also how one incident can connect to so many others in other types of entertainment.