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
Sara points out how, although English has the words “widow” and “orphan,” there is no word for a parent who has lost a child. After Anna’s donated organs are removed, they bring her back down to say goodbye. Brian and Sara go in to turn off her life support. Sara picks up her hand, which is still warm, and tells Brian that she can’t do this. Brian reminds her that Anna is already gone; it’s only her body that remains. They cry together for a while, then look down at the shell that was once Anna. Brian flips her respirator while Sara rests her hand on Anna’s chest, feeling her heart stop beneath her palm: “that tiny loss of rhythm, that hollow calm, that utter loss.”
Sara and Brian going down to say goodbye to Anna is another moment of tragic irony. While the two of them have been preparing themselves to lose Kate this entire time, it is Anna that they ultimately have to say goodbye to. More poignantly, as Brian points out, Anna is already just a body before she fully dies. At the end of her life, she has been reduced to the physical body that has been used to keep Kate alive—something she has been from the very beginning of her life to the very end.
Themes
