Essay Questions

Jessica is trouble by the way in which many of her peers at the high school look at her. What are their primary reactions?

Some of Jessica's fellow students seem to feel awkward around her. They do not want to talk about her accident. They do not know what to say, so they say nothing at all, but they stare at her, knowing that she looks different now but now knowing how they should react to this fact.

Others act as if nothing has happened at all. They look anywhere but at Jessica. They talk around the subject of her disability and they seem completely oblivious to the elephant in the room that is her amputated leg. Nobody seems to know how to act, and so they act according to what makes them feel more comfortable, rather than in a way that might make her return to school easier for her.

Jessica sees herself as a runner. How does this help her recovery?

Jessica sees herself as a runner and it is her entire identity in her own eyes. This is why it is so difficult when her future as a runner seems to have been ripped away from her. Running is her passion. To become a track star, she has needed to work very hard, to be determined, dedicated and to overcome exhaustion and pain in order to keep training and improve.

These are exactly the character traits she needs in making her recovery. She needs a strong work ethic, so that she can learn how to walk in her prosthetic, and how to run in her specialized running prosthetic. She needs determination, because a return to the track seems unlikely, almost impossible. She needs dedication so that however painful learning to run in a prosthetic is at first, she perseveres until she is able to do so.

Jessica has also never seen herself as anything other than a runner. In the immediate aftermath of the accident she sees herself as a runner who is not able to run anymore, but still a runner nevertheless. As it becomes clear that with her running prosthetic she will be able to run again, she is able to reignite her passion and allow herself to believe in the dream again, and to reassume her identity as a runner, because she has never really seen herself as anything else.