By: Elissa King
In the novel, “My Sister’s Keeper,” by Jodi Picoult, the setting is described by the location of where the novel occurs and the time period. The location of the setting in the novel takes place in a small town of Upper Darby in the state of Rhodes Island. The author describes this town as a place where they have “a very small legal system”. The two principal and equally important location settings in the novel are the Providence Hospital and the Fitzgerald’s house. Both locations are equally important because when the main characters are not at the hospital, the novel revolves around their home life. At least two of the characters are always at the hospital in every chapter. Since Kate Fitzgerald has had leukemia since she was a toddler, she and her family have had to go to the hospital frequently so she can receive treatments for her illness. Even though the Fitzgerald family is almost always at the hospital, the author never really describes this setting location. However, the setting of the Fitzgerald house, the author describes it in detail and refers to it as, “a typical American House”. The Fitzgerald family have a three bedroom house. There is also an attic room above the two-door garage, and aluminum siding around the house and the garage. Anna and Kate share one of the bedrooms and Jesse has the attic room to himself. The living room is filled with pictures of mostly Kate and Jesse and a few but not many of Anna. The walk way leading up to the front door of the house is lined with well tended flowers.
Another part of the setting is the time period which is between 1990 and 2010. The author writes the novel jumping from past to present to tell the reader what is happening in the story. The author starts to talk about one part of the novel, for example, Anna going to find a lawyer to help her sue her parents for the right to her own medical decisions, and then suddenly the setting switches to the past when Anna wasn’t born and when Kate was first finding out that she has leukemia. The author does this switching back and forth between the past and present time constantly.
Questions
1. Why do you think the author choose to describe the town as having “a small legal system”?
2. Why did the author choose a small town for a setting instead of a big city like New York?
3. Why would the author not use the court room as the main setting and instead chose to use the hospital?
4. The author describes the house as a “Typical American family”. Why do you think she did so?
5. Why do you think the author didn’t describe the hospital?
6. The setting wasn’t described all at once when it was introduced. Instead the setting was described in little sentences hidden throughout the novel. Why did the author do so?
7. Why did you think the author chose to jump back and forth from present day to the past throughout the novel?
8. Why do you that the two sisters share a room even thought there are three children and three rooms, not including the parents room?
9. Why do you think the author chose to isolate Jesse’s room from the others in the house by moving into the attic room above the garage?
10. Why did each of the characters describe a max of 2 lines for each setting but yet none of them finished their description of the setting?
