Blog 3

Death

One area that The Sledding Hill certainly focused on was death. Although death is a subject that is regularly avoided talking about in our culture, Chris Crutcher willingly added the element in this book. Without the tragic deaths of his dad and best friend, the story would not exist. So, these are some of my thoughts about death in this example of young adult literature.

Of course, right in the beginning of the book, Eddie Proffit is introduced as a character whose life is clearly affected with ADHD. Then, just as his friendship with Billy is at a high point, his already troubled brain is put into turmoil as he experiences a loss. First, his dad who he has always looked up to is killed by a rupturing truck tire. That only made him more dependant on his good friend Billy who is also dedicated to helping out his friend in times of need. But, it doesn’t stop there. Billy, the smartest kid in school goes and kicks a stack of sheetrock on himself! Both of these role models in Eddie’s life are taken by an easily avoidable death within the same month. Was Crutcher being too hard on Eddie, or was he just trying to make a point about what the death of loved ones can do to someone? I personally choose to believe the latter because the rest of the book is about Billy’s journey to finding himself again.

One other part of the book involving death that interested me was the author’s perception of it. I wanted to know how he got some of his ideas towards what happens to his characters after their lives on earth have expired. I thought it was very interesting how he referred to life on earth as one’s Earthgame. After your Earthgame was over, your 21 gram was taken from his body and he was instantly enlightened with all of the knowledge that he could ask for. Then, he could travel around at universe speed and go into the minds of anybody that he wanted to. The one thing that truly fascinated me was how he could work up the energy to bump people. He could also communicate with people who have minds that jump around a lot because there were windows of time that were perfect for it. In my mind I have never really thought about the dead in their afterlife actually being able to communicate with those living on earth. I had always thought that there was some sort of impregnable barrier separating the two, so Chris’ idea was very intriguing to me. It was a very fascinating experience for me to read this book because there were so many new ideas to think about.

Over all, I think that the element of death contributed greatly to the novel. I am glad that it was part of the story because Chris Crutcher’s ideas about life after death are very detailed and from an interesting perspective. Even though I do think that the characters could have died in less pathetic ways, I think that the outcome of the story still ended up the same. It was a good story about a kid who must regain stability after experiencing the deaths of his father and best friend.