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Losing her Aunt

After Nella died Aunt Loretta was the closet thing that Rachel had to a mother. Rachel wanted to grow up and be like Aunt Loretta because she was a successful African American women and was a good role model for her especially in the time period Rachel grew up in. Rachel related to Aunt Loretta because they both had a lighter complexion, and because Nella was white she felt more normal having Aunt Loretta. Aunt Loretta would teach her how to do her hair, dress, and act. Rachel suffered a lot from losing her and was never the same.

Rachel's depiction of how her family died reveals the tragedy that she experiences at such a young age. Her mother pushed her brother off a roof and she couldn't do anything to save him. She lost her whole family within a matter of minutes. After she recovers from her accident she goes and live with her Grandma and Aunt Loretta in Portland, Oregon. So not only did she just lose her family she loses her home.

"Where Aunt Loretta's skin is coming off are giant white patches where she used to be brown. i make the whiteness beautiful. Not hot and raw. Like it looks now. Like giant burns. Now she will be the color of porcelain figures in Grandma's cupboard, special. She will have the perfect color for jewels and long gloves and worship. There is a way that people die. They get sick and they go away." (pg 102)

Losing her Father

Rachel's father was an alcoholic. One night he got very drunk and made out with Nella's sister, and then hit Nella in the face. Nella decided right then that she was going to leave Roger and take her kids with her, and move to Chicago. Rachel was very young at this time and did not have a choice so she left with her mother. Rachel lost her relationship with her father at a young age. He went to Chicago to get his kids back, but it was to late.

After Rachel's accident he went to visit her in the hospital, but he thought that he was such a danger to Rachel's safety that he left before she even woke up.

After Nella left Roger, Rachel never saw him again. Growing up without a father had a great affect on Rachel and the decisions she made as she grew up.

"Nella and me, we made a promise. We were gonna make a family...safe. Now that promise’s broke. When Nella left with the kids in May… three months they’d been gone. Now they’re gone forever. Tell Rachel-, he paused. Tell Rachel now I’m sure she’ll be safe." (pg 94)

Rachel and her aunt

Rachel's Father

Thesis

The motif of loss in the Girl Who Fell From the Sky illustrates to the reader the adversity Rachel has to overcome, and how that affects how she acts.

Rachel's life has been full of loss. She was taken away from her dad at a young age, she lost her family, and she lost her aunt and grandmother.

Introduction

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky was written by Heidi W. Durrow in 2010. It is a fictional story, set in the 1980's, about a biracial girl named Rachel who experiences a great deal of loss in her life.

Losing her Family

"But when Mor pushed Robbie off the roof, he didn't make a sound-he just looked at me and reached out his hand. I didn't see him fall-it was as if he surrendered to the air. Mor came toward me next and I screamed. She stopped and looked at me. Then it was like she saw through me. She took her hand off my shoulder and turned toward the air. She stepped off the edge with Ariel in her arms and danced into the sky."(pg 238)

Seeing her grandmother like this has a great affect on Rachel. Especially because she just lost her aunt that was her role model, and now that the only person she has to look out or her is an alcoholic. Rachel and her grandmother's relationship suffered greatly from grandma becoming an alcoholic. Grandma didn't talk or take care of Rachel which had a negative affect on her. She began to hang out with a bad group of kids and drink herself even though she was underage. She had to deal with this before because her father was an alcoholic. I think that this upsets Rachel because she knows that this could happen to her, but yet she drinks anyways.

Losing her Grandmother

"All her syllables are slurred. sometimes I hide her contributions. I empty out the bottles while she sleeps if anything is left in them...There are some days Grandma doesn't get out of bed now that she's retired. Those days she drinks the contributions all day. She pours a bit of sherry to have after her coffee in the morning, and then with her tea in the afternoon. With her supper she drinks it straight while watching the evening news. Seeing Grandma this way, it makes me know for certain that everything about a person will show up in another person in the family. I know the scientific way to talk about this: heredity and inheritances and the things that get passed on." (pg 178)

Conclusion

In conclusion Rachel's life was just full of tragedy. She is a resilient girl who was just had one terrible event after another happen to her. First she moves away from her father with her mother, then her mother pushes her family off an a roof and the die, she has to go live with her Grandma and aunt, then her aunt dies, which cause her grandma to become an alcoholic. Rachel is a smart girl, but I think that the things that she went through had to great of impact on her life.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

By Heidi W. Durrow

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