The attempt to regain control of one’s life is present in nearly every aspect of My Sister’s Keeper’s plot. The most obvious instance of this is Anna’s lawsuit, in which she is attempting to assert control over her own body despite the potential effect this could have on Kate’s health. However, the theme of control can also be seen more broadly in the trajectory of the characters’ lives. Sara, for instance, desperately attempts to retain control over her family’s life by doing everything she can to keep Kate alive, even when it makes Anna suffer and even, as seen later in the novel, when Kate does not particularly want to be saved and in fact is trying to assert control over her own death by refusing Anna’s kidney. In contrast, Brian tries to regain control by avoiding his family and throwing himself into his work as a firefighter since, even if he cannot save Kate, he is able to take solace in having the ability to save others. Jesse, after his parents give up on him, finds control in setting fire to buildings in order to feel that he has an impact somewhere. The desire for control extends even beyond the Fitzgeralds, most notably to Campbell, who compensates for the lack of control over his body that comes with epilepsy by shutting people out and hiding his condition to keep up a façade of good health.
However, in almost every instance, the desire to maintain such tight control either fails or backfires. Both Sara and Brian ultimately have to accept that Kate will likely die before they’re ready to lose her, while Jesse finds that arson doesn’t fill his emotional void and ends up confiding in his father. Campbell, for his part, has a seizure in the courtroom, revealing his secret and shattering his mask of invulnerability. And although Anna and Kate seem to have the best chance of successfully enacting control over their fates, even this is tragically subverted when Anna dies suddenly in a car accident, causing Kate to receive her kidney despite the protracted legal battle over her right to not do so. While this loss of control is often difficult and tragic for the characters, the ability to embrace it ultimately allows the surviving characters to find freedom in their life, with the epilogue illustrating how they have been able to move on with their lives and find a sense of purpose.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Control ThemeTracker
Control Quotes in My Sister’s Keeper
I tap my pen on the desk, and Judge—my dog—sidles closer. “What happens if you don’t give your sister a kidney?”
“She’ll die.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
Anna’s mouth is set in a thin line. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are. I’m just trying to figure out what made you want to put your foot down, after all this time.”
She looks over at the bookshelf. “Because,” she says simply, “it never stops.”
I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even realizing it. Like scanning the newspaper headline at a red light, and therefore missing the rogue van that jumps the line of traffic and causes an accident. Entering a coffee shop on a whim and meeting the man you will marry one day, while he’s digging for change at the counter. Or this one: instructing your husband to meet you, when for hours you have been convincing yourself this is nothing important at all.
“Providence Hospital doesn’t know anything,” he says fiercely. “Do you remember when the chief’s son broke his left arm, and they put a cast on the right one?”
I stare at the ceiling again. “Just so you know,” I say, more loudly than I’ve intended, “I’m not going to let Kate die.”
There is an awful sound beside me—an animal wounded, a drowning gasp. Then Brian presses his face against my shoulder, sobs into my skin. He wraps his arms around me and holds on as if he’s losing his balance. “I’m not,” I repeat, but even to myself, it sounds like I am trying too hard.
Anna’s real name is Andromeda. It’s on her birth certificate, honest to God. The constellation she’s named after tells the story of a princess, who was shackled to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster—punishment for her mother Casseopeia, who had bragged to Poseidon about her own beauty. Perseus, flying by, fell in love with Andromeda and saved her. In the sky, she’s pictured with her arms outstretched and her hands chained.
The way I saw it, the story had a happy ending. Who wouldn’t want that for a child?
“Anna,” I say, at the exact same moment as Sara Fitzgerald.
It is my responsibility to explain to Anna that Judge DeSalvo wants a few minutes in private. I need to coach her, so that she says the right things, so that the judge doesn’t throw the case out before she gets what she wants. She is my client; by definition, she is supposed to follow my counsel.
But when I call her name, she turns toward her mother.
It would solve a thousand problems if I rolled the Jeep over an embankment. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it, you know. On my license, it says I’m an organ donor, but the truth is I’d consider being an organ martyr. I’m sure I’m worth a lot more dead than alive—the sum of the parts equals more than the whole. I wonder who might wind up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart.
The baby’s head slips through the seal of my skin. The doctor’s hand holds her, slides that gorgeous cord free of her neck, delivers her shoulder by shoulder.
I struggle to my elbows to watch what is going on below. “The umbilical cord,” I remind him. “Be careful.” He cuts it, beautiful blood, and hurries it out to the room to a place where it will be cryogenically preserved until Kate is ready for it.
For a minute I look at [Anna]. What would I do, if I found out that Izzy needed a kidney, or a part of my liver, or marrow? The answer isn’t even questionable—I would ask how quickly we could go to the hospital and have it done.
But then, it would have been my choice, my decision.
“Do you have kids?” Anna asks.
I laugh. “What do you think?”
“It’s probably a good thing,” she admits. “No offense, but you don’t exactly look like a parent.”
This fascinates me. “What do parents look like?”
She seems to think about this. “You know about how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he’s really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that.”
[Kate] sprinted, and nearly had it, but then Jesse took a running leap and slammed her to the ground, crushing her underneath him.
In that moment everything stopped. Kate lay with her arms and legs splayed, unmoving. My father was there in a breath, shoving at Jesse. “What the hell is the matter with you!”
“I forgot!”
My mother: “Where does it hurt? Can you sit up?”
But when Kate rolled over, she was smiling. “It doesn’t hurt. It feels great.”
My parents looked at each other. Neither of them understood like I did, like Jesse did—that no matter who you are, there is some part of you that always wishes you were someone else—and when, for a millisecond, you get that wish, it’s a miracle. “He forgot,” Kate said to nobody, and she lay on her back, beaming up at the cold hawkeye sun.
I’m a coward. There are times when my shift is over that I’ll stay and roll hose, or put on a fresh pot of coffee for the crew coming in, instead of heading straight to my house. I have often wondered why I get more rest in a place where, for the most part, I’m roused out of bed two or three times a night. I think because in a firehouse, I don’t have to worry about emergencies happening—they’re supposed to. The minute I walk through the door at home, I’m worrying about what might come next.
I could ask [Kate] if she has talked to the nephrologists about a kidney transplant, if she has any particular feelings about undergoing so many different, painful treatments. But this is exactly what Kate is expecting me to ask, which is probably why the question that comes out of my mouth is completely different. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“No one ever asks me that.” She eyes me carefully. “What makes you think I’m going to grow up?”
“What makes you think you’re not? Isn’t that why you’re doing all this?”
Just when I think she isn’t going to answer me, she speaks. “I always wanted to be a ballerina.” Her arm goes up, a weak arabesque. “You know what ballerinas have? […] Absolute control. When it comes to their bodies, they know exactly what’s going to happen, and when.”
“You are allowed to take a break, you know. No one has to be a martyr twenty-four/seven.”
But I hear her wrong. “I think once you sign on to be a mother, that’s the only shift they offer.”
“I said martyr,” Zanne laughs. “Not mother.”
I smile a little. “Is there a difference?”
“Did you want to get your crown of thorns out of the suitcase first? Listen to yourself, Sara, and stop being such a drama queen. Yes, you drew a bad lot of fate. Yes, it sucks to you.”
Bright color rises on my cheeks. “You have no idea what my life is like.”
“Neither do you,” Zanne says. “You’re not living, Sara. You’re waiting for Kate to die.”
I decided one day to force myself into imagining what it would be like after Kate died. That way, […] when it really happened, I’d be ready.
I kept at it for weeks. […] There were entire days when I did nothing but cry; others where I felt like I’d swallowed a lead plate; some more where I worked really hard at going through the motions of getting dressed and making my bed and studying my vocab words because it was easier than doing anything else.
But then, there were times when I let the veil lift a little, and other ideas would pop up. Like what it would be like to study oceanography at the University of Hawaii. Or try skydiving. Or move to Prague. Or any of a million other pipe dreams. I’d try to stuff myself into one of these scenarios, but it was like wearing a size five sneaker when your foot is a seven—you can get by for a few steps, and then you sit down and pull off the shoe because it plain hurts too much. I am convinced that there is a censor sitting on my brain with a red stamp, reminding me what I am not supposed to even think about, no matter how seductive it might be.
“I won’t let your sister take care of Kate,” Brian says. “I’m supposed to take care of Kate.” The hose falls to the ground, dribbles and spits at our feet. “Sara, she’s not going to live long enough to use that money for college.”
The sun is bright; the sprinkler twitches on the grass, spraying rainbows. It is far too beautiful a day for words like these. I turn and run into the house I lock myself in the bathroom.
A moment later, Brian bangs on the door. “Sara? Sara, I’m sorry.”
I pretend I can’t hear him. I pretend I haven’t heard anything he’s said.
The paper [Brian] has been scribbling on falls out of his hands and lands at my feet; before he can reach it I pick it up. It is full of tearstains, of cross-outs. She loved the way it smelled in Spring, I read. She could beat anyone at gin rummy. She could dance even if there wasn’t music playing. There are notes on the side, too: Favorite color: pink. Favorite time of day: twilight. Used to read Where the Wild Things Are, over and over, and still knows it by heart.
All the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. “Is this…a eulogy?”
By now, Brian is crying, too, “If I don’t do it now, I won’t be able to when it’s really time.”
I shake my head. “It’s not time.”
You might remember the recent case of the firefighters in Worcester, Massachusetts, who were killed in a blaze started by a homeless woman. She knew the fire had started and she left the building, but she never called 911 because she thought she might get into trouble. Six men died that night, and yet the State couldn’t hold this woman responsible, because in America—even if the consequences are tragic—you are not responsible for someone else’s safety. You aren’t obligated to help anyone in distress. Not if you’re the one who started the fire, not if you’re a passerby to a car wreck, not if you’re a perfectly matched donor.
What if I was the one who was sick? What if Kate had been asked to do what I’ve done? What if one of these days, some marrow or blood or whatever actually worked, and that was the end? What if I could look back on all this one day and feel good about what I did, instead of feeling guilty? What if the judge doesn’t think I’m right?
What if he does?
I can’t answer a single one of these, which is how I know that whether I’m ready or not, I’m growing up.
“Taylor already thinks you’re beautiful.”
“Well I don’t!” Kate cries. “I don’t, Mom, and maybe I want to just once.”
[…]
“We’ll sew something,” I suggest. “You can design it.”
“You don’t know how to sew,” Kate sighs.
“I’ll learn.”
“In a day?” She shakes her head. “You can’t fix it every time, Mom. How come I know that, and you don’t?”
Can you tell me what the right answer is here? […] Because I don’t know where to look for it. I know what’s right. I know what’s fair. But neither of those apply here. I can sit, and I can think about it, and I can tell you what should be and what ought to be. I can even tell you there’s got to be a better solution. But it’s been thirteen years, Mr. Alexander, and I still haven’t found it.
“I’m sick of waiting for something that’s going to happen anyway. I think I’ve fucked up everyone’s life long enough, don’t you?”
“But everyone’s worked so hard just to keep you alive. You can’t kill yourself.”
All of a sudden Kate started to cry. “I know. I can’t.”
It took me a few moments to realize this meant she’d already tried before.
