The Pact
| The Struggle Within | Jodi Picoult’s: The Pact | By Rayna Crawford | | |
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“I can’t imagine loving someone so much you’d do anything they asked. Even if that happened to be murder.” (384) Murder is never acceptable, but in Jodi Picoult’s novel The Pact, Picoult explores ‘murder/suicide’ from a different point of view, love. Jodi Picoult discusses what happens when one is faced with an evil that is unfathomable and how one reacts doing things one did not considered before. Picoult demonstrates the emotional struggle one faces through her characters: Christopher Harte, Emily Gold and Michael Gold.
Christopher Harte faces a struggle within himself. Does he help the girl he loves kill herself, or does make her hold onto the life she doesn’t want, to please himself? As Christopher Harte took the gun from his dad’s cabinet, he realized: “He could not let Emily kill herself. When you’d been with someone your whole life, you could not imagine living in a world that did not have her in it.” (283) Chris’s world revolved around Emily, he had known her all his life and now the realization of possibly losing her has made him question if he was going to have a future without her. Emily had been a part of Chris’s life since birth; he could not picture a world without her in it, because there had never been a time where she wasn’t a part of his life, “‘he realized that if Emily was dead, there would be no reason for him to be alive.’” (334) She was his life, without her, he saw himself as nothing. As the night progressed into what would become the night of Emily’s death, Chris realized that if he truly loved Emily, he would help her give her what she wanted, death; “When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.” (327) Chris knew it would hurt losing Emily, but he could not stand to see her
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“I can’t imagine loving someone so much you’d do anything they asked. Even if that happened to be murder.” (384) Murder is never acceptable, but in Jodi Picoult’s novel The Pact, Picoult explores ‘murder/suicide’ from a different point of view, love. Jodi Picoult discusses what happens when one is faced with an evil that is unfathomable and how one reacts doing things one did not considered before. Picoult demonstrates the emotional struggle one faces through her characters: Christopher Harte, Emily Gold and Michael Gold.
Christopher Harte faces a struggle within himself. Does he help the girl he loves kill herself, or does make her hold onto the life she doesn’t want, to please himself? As Christopher Harte took the gun from his dad’s cabinet, he realized: “He could not let Emily kill herself. When you’d been with someone your whole life, you could not imagine living in a world that did not have her in it.” (283) Chris’s world revolved around Emily, he had known her all his life and now the realization of possibly losing her has made him question if he was going to have a future without her. Emily had been a part of Chris’s life since birth; he could not picture a world without her in it, because there had never been a time where she wasn’t a part of his life, “‘he realized that if Emily was dead, there would be no reason for him to be alive.’” (334) She was his life, without her, he saw himself as nothing. As the night progressed into what would become the night of Emily’s death, Chris realized that if he truly loved Emily, he would help her give her what she wanted, death; “When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.” (327) Chris knew it would hurt losing Emily, but he could not stand to see her