Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Upper Darby is a fictional Rhode Island town near Providence. Neither Rhode Island nor Upper Darby are really integral to the story—honestly, My Sister's Keeper could have been set in any predomi...
Narrator Point of View
Threads of FateMy Sister's Keeper has seven different narrators: Anna, Campbell, Sara, Brian, Jesse, Julia, and in the epilogue, Kate. Setting them apart is the fact that each of their chapters is...
What's Up With the Title?
The title is a play on the Biblical phrase "Am I my brother's keeper?" uttered by Cain to God, in a sassy way. Yes, that Cain, the one who, you know, killed his brother. More on that in a bit.We he...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
Prologue: No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. – Ca...
What's Up With the Ending?
Everything is looking pretty good in the final chapters of My Sister's Keeper. Anna reveals that Kate doesn't want her kidney and this whole trial was her idea, meaning that it's okay for Anna to k...
Tough-o-Meter
Picoult didn't get to the top of the best-seller lists so many times by writing dense narratives like William Faulkner or using purposefully obtuse language like James Joyce. Nope, she got there be...