Go Ask Alice

Alice’s mother and father contribute to the idealistic nuclear family encouraged in the mid-19th century. Alice often shadows her mother’s domestic roles, establishing her as an exemplary stay-at-home mother. Alice assists her mother in preparing for Joel’s visit: “I raced home from school and helped Mom clean the house like the King of the World was coming, and I made sure we had all the ingredients for orange yeast rolls, my one specialty” (124-25). In addition to caring for her children, Alice’s mother concerns herself with keeping the house clean and tidy, cooking, and attending social engagements. However, she mistakenly believes that children who look well-groomed and presentable must be rule-followers who avoid dangerous behavior. Alice often feels ashamed and guilty of herself, knowing that her mother would disapprove of her choices to experiment with drugs and counterculture. Alice’s mother changes throughout the diary, treating Alice with more maturity and respect and less like a child.

Similarly, Alice’s dad fulfills the stereotypical working father role within a nuclear family. Primarily occupied with work, Alice’s dad becomes more of an influential presence in Alice’s life when she faces more critical challenges. He reinforces gender roles at home by encouraging Alice to cook and clean with her mother. After Alice cooks her mother’s birthday dinner, her father comments that “he wouldn’t be surprise if [Alice] didn’t make some young man a good wife someday” (111). Alice’s father encourages her relationship with Joel, showing more concern for her potential future as a wife than for her academic pursuits. Alice’s dad’s behavior is typical for his generation; he becomes more intellectually inclusive with Alice after she runs away and returns home.

Alice occasionally develops sibling rivalry with Tim and Alex, a common conflict in coming-of-age novels that builds Alice’s relatability. After the family’s move, Alice reports, “Last night’s dinner was excruciating. Alex loves her new school and her new little friend Tricia. Tim rode the bus with the neighbor boy and was in three of his classes” (16). Instead of feeling happy for her siblings’ new friendships, Alice feels jealous and sorry for herself while overwhelmed with loneliness. Common in young adult literature, sibling rivalry and struggles to master emotions depict Alice as someone with whom most teens could identify.

Nevertheless, Alice clearly loves and feels protective of her siblings. As her diary progresses, she connects and communicates with Tim more often: “Tim has such a clear, decent honorable outlook on life. I’m […] proud he’s my brother! I’m grateful that he will be seen with me” (105). Alice worries about being a bad influence on her younger siblings, and she becomes especially fearful of someone dosing Tim or Alex without their consent. Alice’s close relationship and improved connection with her siblings make her death all the more tragic. All three siblings care for each other profoundly, and though their reactions to Alice’s death aren’t recorded, the event undoubtedly has a major impact on their lives.

Like Tim and Alex, Alice’s genuinely close, loving relationship with her grandparents adds to her benevolence. At Christmas, she feels happy when “Grandma made taffy with us like she used to when we were little, and even Daddy pulled some. We all laughed a lot, and Alex got it in her hair and Gramps got his false teeth stuck together, and we were almost hysterical” (8). Alice cherishes happy moments with her grandparents, finding events like making candy together significant enough to record in her diary. She doesn’t take her family for granted and shows concern for Gran and Gramps when their health declines. Alice’s strong familial relationships build her character as kindhearted, compassionate, and wholesome, making her death even more tragic.

Alice’s preoccupation with worms and maggots on Gran and Gramps’s corpses symbolizes unwanted change. Shortly after Gramps dies, when Alice is dosed with LSD without her consent, she envisions worms and maggots eating his body. She thinks “about what would happen if [she] should die. Worms don’t make distinction under the ground. They wouldn’t care that [she’s] young and that [her] flesh is solid and firm” (119). The creatures, which symbolize her fears of losing control over her body and life, invade Alice’s thoughts shortly after Gran and Gramps die, a change Alice neither wanted nor was prepared to face. Alice superimposes the thoughts of worms and maggots on her own body, panicking her as she considers her own death. She articulates her desires to remain sober and healthy and to live up to her parent’s expectations; however, she feels outward influences pulling her in directions she attempts to resist.

Alice’s relationship with Chris establishes The Need for Connection and Empathy in Adolescence as one of the novel’s central themes. Before meeting Chris, Alice feels isolated, vulnerable, and ashamed of herself for not making new friends after her family’s move. She’s desperate and impressionable by the time she meets Chris, whom she believes to be “a great girl and [she] love[s] her and relate[s] better to her than [she] ever ha[s] with anyone in [her] life, even Beth” (47). Although Alice is already open to using drugs when she meets Chris, she allows Chris to introduce her to a broader variety of addictive substances. If Alice already had a supportive group of empathetic friends in place, she might have found the willpower to resist Chris’s heart-shaped amphetamines. Chris frequently leads Alice into dangerous situations, pulling her further from her life goals. Alice’s friendship and connection with her close friend are more important than her health and safety.

Chris is similar to Alice in that she’s brilliant, resourceful, and ambitious. Together, the girls open a small, successful business, intuitively placing their shop among their target demographic. The girls display artistic ability by painting, redecorating their shop, and crafting jewelry. Chris maintains business relationships with jewelry dealers: “Apparently Chris knew just what to buy because just today we’ve done twenty dollars worth of business. She’s going to have to go back to the market tomorrow” (70). Although their business venture is short-lived, it ends only because the girls decide to return home. If Chris and Alice had been older and already had a more mature worldview and the emotional stability necessary to strike out on their own, they would likely have been successful entrepreneurs.