Change of Heart #4 Q1

The values and experiences of Change of Heart are very unique. Shay Bourne is in jail and is sentenced to the death penalty and June Nealon's daughter, Elizabeth, will die if she does not get a new heart. I could not directly relate to these because they are very extreme. However, I think that I can connect to some of the underlying feelings and messages that are shown through these hardships. For example, Father Michael is the spiritual adviser to Shay and reminds him every day to never give up on God and that he has a plan. Shay does not see the meaning of this and refuses to even talk to Father Michael some days. And some days I think that I forget that God is with me and that I need someone telling me every once in a while that God is still there, even through little things. And I think some of the characters in the novel portray a person that is worth striving for. June Nealon never gives up on trying to help her daughter. She lost her husband and other daughter and is battling with the lawsuit of Shay Bourne but is always a great mother and is so strong throughout the entire novel. I think the true purpose of the novel is to show that people can go through and experience a change of heart. It happened to June Nealon when she accepted Shay Bourne's heart for her child Elizabeth knowing that he is somewhat responsible for the deaths in her family. I do not think that I have gone through a change of heart quite yet but I do believe that it can happen. This book is very powerful in the sense that God is present in so many of the character's lives. And I think anyone reading the novel can connect to a time when God was needed in their life or God was so prominently present that he seemed to be holding your hand through something. I really liked how Jodi Picoult incorporated the power of God into Change of Heart because most novels do not have a lot of content about God. I think the way that Jodi Picoult explains everything in detail, including the feelings of the characters, connects the reader to the story. For me it did because when reading it, I felt as if I knew the characters and felt bad for them. The underlying messages and how characters were portrayed were a lot easier to relate to than the actual content of Change of Heart.

Change of Heart #3 Q1

Jodi Picoult, as an author, has very unique stylistic devices within her novels. She tells the story from multiple characters and each chapter is usually a different character. However, this does keep the story moving and gets a lot of different opinions from the different characters. In Change of Heart, the chapters alternate characters including Shay Bourne, Father Michael, June Nealon, Lucius, who is an inmate on Shay's floor, and Maggie, who is Shay's lawyer. The chapters are usually relatively short and the characters usually have similar amounts of chapters. I like this style of writing because it keeps things moving instead of having one chapter drag out to the point where you lose track of what is going on. I also like this technique because it interests me that Jodi Picoult makes so many different personalities in her books, but you get to meet most of them and really read what they feel about what is going on. I do not remember reading any other books that use the same technique of the chapters being told by different points of view. This device makes Jodi Picoult stand out and makes me want to read more of her books.
 Another device that Jodi Picoult uses in her book is the type of diction she writes in. The story is easy to understand but it is not "dumbed down" to any extent. Change of Heart talks about true details, for example, of living in a prison or dealing with a child who has to have heart surgery. I am not very good at vocabulary but I understood the text very well. And usually if a word that I didn't know was in a sentence, it was easy enough to figure out what it meant because of the context. I think the type of diction used says a lot about a style of writing and also the author. I have read a couple of Jodi Picoult's books and have not had trouble getting through any of them. The way she writes actually makes me want to read more because it is an easy read. The style of Change of Heart really made it easy for me to keep up with the plot of the book and kept me interested because it did not bore me. I think that without the different characters telling the story, the plot line would not be the same and it would be very hard to keep up with. Jodi Picoult really does a good job with the chapter types and the type of diction she uses.

Change of Heart #2 Q1

Sometimes endings to novels are very predictable and some endings seem to come out of nowhere. In Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult, the ending was some what predictable but there were a couple details that surprised me very much. Through out the entire novel, Shay Bourne is to blame for the murders of Kurt and Elizabeth Nealon. However, at the end, we find out that Shay was trying to save Elizabeth from being sexually abused by her stepfather Kurt. Shay kills Kurt but Kurt accidentally shot Elizabeth while trying to save himself. Jodi Picoult made Shay Bourne look like the bad guy in the novel, but in reality he was just trying to help and he was the only one left to blame. This came as a very big surprise to me because there were no hints that led to Kurt sexually abusing Elizabeth, and being the one who actually killed his own daughter. Also, at the end of the novel, Shay Bourne had to die because of his sentence of the death penalty. That was predictable because sentences like that usually do not second guess themselves. However, characters in the novel like Father Michael and Maggie were trying their best to postpone his death until they figured out what to do with his heart and Claire Nealon. When Shay did die, he donated his heart to Elizabeth. The novel was very "wishy-washy" about the outcome of Claire and Shay's heart, one chapter they were going to accept the heart, the next they were hesitant because of who was the donor. This made the ending of the novel hard to predict because I was not sure what was actually going to happen and kept me want to keep reading to find out the outcome.
 I really liked the ending of the novel because it was very different from any other novel. The entire plot was kind of flipped when it was revealed that Kurt was sexually abusing his daughter and Shay was trying to stop it. It made me really think about into the story and how Shay felt so bad for the family. It did not make sense before because he should not have cared, but since he was trying to help, I understand why he felt so bad and wanted to donate his heart. I also liked how Claire and her mother decided to accept the heart transplant and save Claire's life. June Nealon found out the truth about her husband and came to the conclusion that accepting the heart from Shay Bourne would help her daughter and have a piece of the man who tried to help save her other daughter Elizabeth. Jodi Picoult did a great job with the ending of the novel, and made it an even better story with the twists at the end.

Change of Heart #1 Q1

I have read many of Jodi Picoult's novels and none of them have interested me and kept me reading like Change of Heart did. There were many things that confused me and surprised me while reading the novel. The entire novel is strange in the sense that Shay Bourne's morals do not add up to what he comes off to be. Being a convicted murderer of two people, I thought Shay was going to be the type of character who you did not like, did not want to see them succeed, and rooted against them. However, Shay was not a heartless killer, he wanted to make up for his wrong doing against the Nealon family, to whom he affected deeply. This surprised me because being a prisoner, to me, usually means that they did not really care about what they were doing and especially did not care who you were affecting. But Shay did care. Another aspect of the novel that surprised me was Father Michael's outlook and attitude toward the whole situation. He was the spiritual advisor to Shay but also was on the jury that decided Shay's ultimate fate. My first impression was that Father Michael was going to help Shay the best he could but not much was going to come out of his efforts. But Father Michael went above and beyond my expectations of his relationship and guidance towards Shay. He visited Shay as much as he could, brought Shay's sister to see him, and stood by him through his long journey. I thought it was going to be the bare minimum of a relationship and it really surprised me how Father Michael helped Shay so much and how close they actually became. However, this does not seem right to me because murder is so wrong and I thought Father Michael was not going to want to get so involved and give as much help to a murderer.
 At first I was confused with what Shay wanted to do to help he Nealon family. Donating his heart to Elizabeth just did not make much sense to me. He wanted to gain inner peace by doing something after he died because of his sentence, which is the death penalty. It is a very nice gesture but it really confused me about the true meaning of donating his heart. And after finishing the novel, I am not quite sure if I received a true answer. Most of the actual plot line was not confusing to me. However, some of the inner details that needed to be looked into more and thought about confused me and made me think more.