My Sister’s Keeper spends considerable time exploring the isolating nature of severe illness. This, of course, most profoundly affects Kate herself. Due to her aggressive leukemia, which keeps her out of school and causes her to appear visibly ill, she has never been able to have a normal group of friends. Although she eventually gets her first boyfriend, Taylor, she is devastated when he dies suddenly from complications of his own cancer, a tragedy that highlights just how precarious relationships can be when you’re extremely ill. Kate’s isolation is in some ways paralleled by that of Campbell, who breaks up with his first love, Julia, after becoming epileptic. While Campbell’s isolation is in some ways more voluntary than Kate’s—he chooses not to divulge his disability due to pride and shame—both face profound loneliness due to both external and internal stigma surrounding illness, and particularly visible illness.
In addition, it is not only the ill people themselves who face isolation in the novel. Those close to them can also be affected. Julia, for instance, suffers severe loneliness after Campbell leaves her, as she believes something is wrong with her. However, this profound isolation is most clearly seen with the Fitzgeralds, who become isolated not just from outside society—such as when Anna is unable to attend hockey camp, since she has to stay close to home for emergencies—but from each other. Jesse, for example, gives up on connecting with his family due to the lack of attention he receives from them, and his parents give up on him in turn. Sara and Brian are also quite out of touch with Anna’s wants and needs, hence their surprise at her lawsuit, and they also become emotionally estranged from each other during the long course of Kate’s treatment. In one sense, then, Anna’s lawsuit is a boon in that it requires the family to truly face the emotions and tensions they’ve been suppressing in the name of saving Kate. In the end, although Anna’s story ends in tragedy, her family is able to overcome both Kate’s illness and the resulting sense of isolation, ultimately becoming closer to each other by the end of the novel.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Illness and Isolation ThemeTracker
Illness and Isolation Quotes in My Sister’s Keeper
“For God’s sake, Anna,” my mother says. “Do you even realize what the consequences would be?”
My throat closes like the shutter of a camera, so that any air or excuses must move through a tunnel as thin as a pin. I’m invisible, I think, and realize too late I have spoken out loud.
My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snap backward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered.
There was this kid in my school, Jimmy Stredboe, who used to be a total loser. He got zits on top of his zits; he had a pet rat named Orphan Annie; and once in science class he puked into the fish tank. No one ever talked to him, in case dorkhood was contagious. But then one summer he was diagnosed with MS. After that, no one was mean to Jimmy anymore. If you passed him in the hall, you smiled. If he sat next to you at the lunch table, you nodded hello. It was as if being a walking tragedy canceled out ever having been a geek.
From the moment I was born, I have been the girl with the sick sister. All my life bank tellers have given me extra lollipops; principals have known me by name. No one is ever outright mean to me.
[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.
“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 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.”
“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.
There might be a morning when I wake up and her face isn’t the first thing I see. Or a lazy August afternoon when I can’t quite recall anymore where the freckles were on her right shoulder. Maybe one of these days, I will not be able to listen to the sound of snow falling and hear her footsteps.
When I start to feel this way I go into the bathroom and I lift up my shirt and touch the white lines of my scar. I remember how, at first, I thought the stitches seemed to spell out her name. I think about her kidney working inside me and her blood running through my veins. I take her with me, whenever I go.
