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
During a break, Julia goes into the bathroom and puts down her bag, a Guatemalan woven knapsack, on the counter. Anna exits a bathroom stall and washes her hands. Julia asks her about her decision not to testify. When Anna is evasive, Julia tells her that getting what you want sometimes requires doing things you don’t want to do. Anna blows her off but compliments her bag. Julia explains that it takes 20 spools of thread to make the pattern. Anna compares this to truth, then leaves.
Anna continues to stubbornly refuse to testify or provide a reason for her silence, clearly showing that she’s not yet ready to put down her walls and share her true reasons for her lawsuit. However, her odd comparison of Julia’s knapsack to the truth suggests that whatever she is hiding might disrupt everyone’s understanding of the lawsuit.
Themes
Julia takes the stand; she watches Campbell’s hands tremble. He asks her what her recommendation is. Julia looks at Anna and says that she understands the profound responsibility that Anna feels, having been conceived to save Kate. However, she also understands Sara and Brian’s drive to do whatever it takes to save Kate. Julia testifies that there is a point where the Fitzgeralds must let go.
Julia’s testimony underscores the complicated moral conflict that the Fitzgeralds face: namely, that while it’s understandable that Sara and Brian want to do anything they can to save Kate, they can only do this at the cost of Anna’s agency and quality of life.
Themes
In a flashback to after her breakup with Campbell, Julia is inconsolable and is barely getting out of bed. Finally, she musters the energy to go to Wheeler and approaches a boy on the sailing team, asking him for a ride home. The two of them have sex in the back of his car. Julia explains that she did this so that she could get the smell and taste of Campbell off of her, and so that she could stop feeling as hollow as a balloon.
Julia’s encounter with the boy on the sailing team is an example of her attempting to reclaim her body from Campbell after their breakup. However, it is an ultimately hollow attempt to feel a sense of control, since her physical fulfillment will not heal her emotional scars.
Themes
Back in the present, Julia explains how, when she first accepted this assignment, she initially thought that medical emancipation was the best choice. The easy part of the decision is determining that, physiologically, donating a kidney is not in Anna’s best interest. However, Julia also feels that, given the entire family’s inability to make informed decisions due to the constant state of crisis they’re in, Anna is not able to make independent decisions without the pressure of her parents’ wishes weighing on her. In other words, Julia says that nobody in the family has the ability to make unbiased decisions about Anna’s care. Judge DeSalvo asks what her recommendation is.
In an echo of Campbell’s cross-examination of Dr. Neaux, Julia alludes to the fact that Anna is not the only Fitzgerald incapable of making objective decisions; every single one of them has had their judgement clouded by the trauma of Kate’s illness. In this way, Julia shows profound empathy for the entire Fitzgerald family—but she also subtly questions their ability to handle the current situation with any real rationality.
Themes
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