Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Sister’s Keeper, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bodily Autonomy
Siblinghood
Parenthood
Control
Illness and Isolation
Summary
Analysis
In a flashback to when Jesse was 14, Sara and Brian send him to a boot camp on a farm. One day, Jesse is assigned to herd sheep, a job that he hates due to the sheep being difficult to guide. He hears a scream in the distance and finds a sheep giving birth. The sheep has been unable to fully push out the lamb. Jesse doesn’t want the sheep to die on his watch, so he grabs the lamb’s feet and pulls it out, then cuts it out of a skin sac suffocating it so that it can breathe. The lamb survives, and Jesse recognizes it the entire summer due to its white pupils, a sign that it's been to the other side. Jesse tells the reader that he’s describing this because, when Kate opens her eyes in the present, he knows she’s been on the other side, too.
Although Jesse is a chronic troublemaker, his encounter with the sheep and her lamb suggests that he does have compassion for other living things and puts a high value on life—a trait that is all the more tragic given that his parents have written him off enough to send him away to a boot camp. As Jesse describes, his experience with the lamb is also an explicit parallel to Kate, who has had a brush with death but manages to return to the living.
Themes
When Kate wakes up, she sees Jesse and jokes that she must be in Hell. She asks why he’s here; internally, he thinks it’s because Kate won’t be here much longer, but he jokes that he came to see a hot nurse. Kate laughs and says she’s going to miss him, shocking them both into silence. Kate wonders if she’ll be reincarnated; Jesse thinks he’ll only be reincarnated into carrion. One of Kate’s monitors goes off, but she says that she’s fine. Jesse thinks back to little bets he made with himself when he was younger—bets like holding his breath to keep the night from coming—and wonders if he can do the same to save Kate. He asks her if she’s afraid of dying, and she says she’ll let him know. She then falls asleep. Jesse leaves her room and punches a hole in the wall.
In their conversation, both Jesse and Kate find themselves coming to terms with Kate’s imminent death. Rather than avoiding the topic, they face it head-on, talking about what they think death will be like for Kate. However, Jesse still struggles with his inability to save Kate, as shown by his punching the wall after she falls asleep. This act, like his past acts of rebellion, are manifestations of emotional pain rather than shallow attempts to cause trouble.
Themes
