Ring Around The Rosie

Author’s Note: I wrote about Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick because I had a goal to write a new point of view piece. I chose to write about Ashes because there are two other important characters that accompany the main character (Alex) throughout the book, and the one I chose in particular (Ellie) seemed like an interesting character to use.

Imagine you’re a grumpy eight year old, and you’re on a camping trip with your grandpa (who you don’t like) and a stranger you just bumped into while camping, when you see birds crowding above you and just dropping dead, deer jumping off the nearby cliff, squirrels running around like crazy, iPod gets really hot and shuts off, and finally you hear a large crash and you fall to the ground, and as soon as you get up you see your grandpa lying dead on the ground and the stranger looking over him. This is just a bit of what happens to Ellie in Ashes, which is normally written in the point of view of 18 year old Alex. Ashes is about a girl who had a deadly tumor in her head, out in the woods because she was heading to Lake Michigan to spread her parent’s ashes—who recently died in a helicopter crash—who runs into Jim and Ellie. They were talking when suddenly everything seemed to go haywire, and she sees Jim drop, and soon after, she falls down too. when she comes to she sees Jim surrounded by a pool of blood. From that moment, the world had gone corrupt with cannibalistic zombie kids, old people whose goal is to kill or be killed, and dead bodies all over the place.

The book, which, as I said before being written in the point of view of Alex, can really affect the tone of the story, which in turn, can affect the way the reader reacts. For example, when Alex and Ellie see two kids eating the raw meat of an old lady, Alex would’ve been able to handle it more than Ellie would, and the reader would’ve been much more surprised if it were told in Ellie’s point of view. If Ellie were the main character, the reader’s reaction would’ve been much more powerful, though I think the feeling wouldn’t of been the same, because with Ellie the feeling probably been shock and disbelief, but with Alex the feeling was complete and utter terror, which is what I think the author was going for.

In conclusion, I think that the book would be very affected if the book had been written in Ellie’s point of view versus if it were written in Alex’s point of view. Like how a kid might have more surprised reaction or a more terrified reaction then it would in Alex’s.