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
Judge DeSalvo decides the hearing parties should go see Kate. When they get to her room, she and Jesse are talking about which celebrities would win against each other in boxing matches. Kate is initially happy to see Sara but is uneasy when she sees the judge. Judge DeSalvo asks to talk to Kate alone, so everyone else files out of the room. As Sara leaves the room, she hears Kate say that she knew Judge DeSalvo would come, since everything “always comes back to [her].”
Kate’s reaction to Judge DeSalvo coming to question her shows how well she understands her position in the family. In admitting that everything always comes back to her, she is acknowledging that she and her illness have defined her entire family—to the point that, even now, she is the driving force behind Anna filing her lawsuit.
Themes
Judge DeSalvo emerges, tells everyone that closing will be the next morning, then leaves. Campbell offers to have Sara take Anna home, then leaves. Anna asks to see Kate, so the Fitzgeralds go back to her room. They spend time with her for a while; eventually, everyone but Sara leaves. She climbs into bed with Kate and ponders how parents don’t have children—they receive them. She tells Kate she’s sorry, but Kate says she isn’t because she’s had a good life. Sara, tearing up, agrees that it was the best.
Now that Sara knows that Kate catalyzed Anna’s lawsuit out of a desire to die, she is able to accept Kate’s imminent death. Rather than attempting to control Kate’s future, she instead embraces the past they’ve had together by celebrating the life Kate lived for 16 years, when she was expected to have so much less.
Themes
