Perseverence Essay

Rachel
Summer 2006
Honors English

Perseverance Essay

In My Sister’s Keeper and The Five People You Meet in Heaven, characters demonstrate the quality of perseverance. To persevere is to “persist in a purpose, idea, or task in the face of obstacles or discouragement”, according to The American Heritage College Dictionary. Characters in each book go about different ways showing perseverance throughout their lives. Yet no matter what, perseverance in the characters always comes down to the bottom line of never giving up.
My Sister’s Keeper is filled with examples of perseverance. Anna, the main character, is a matched donor for her older sister Kate who was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) at a young age. Throughout her whole life, Anna has gone through numerous blood donations, bone marrow donations, and surgeries so that Kate has a chance at survival. After Kate’s kidneys start to fail, Anna’s parents want her to donate a kidney to her sister. Therefore, Anna files a lawsuit against her parents for medical emancipation so she can make her own medical decisions. Throughout the book, the reader is led to believe that Anna is pursuing this lawsuit because she has gotten fed up with being the one to donate parts of her body such as lymphocytes and bone marrow for her sister’s well being, but in the end the story twists. It turns out that Anna has gone against her parents wishes because her sister asked her to. Kate is sick of having to be in the hospital and doesn’t want to have to go through yet another surgery, she has accepted death. Anna showed perseverance because she never gave up in supporting and loving her sister. Even when Anna’s mom was upset with her about the lawsuit and even when Anna had to sell her most prized possession, the locket her dad gave her that she never took off, in order to hire a lawyer, she continued to do what she felt was right. The whole time Anna never lets out that it was Kate who convinced her to file the...