Choosing the right paths and choices

Doing everything you’re supposed to can lead to high expectations. Being the “perfect, good, loyal” person isn’t always going to be fun. At the same time, being trustworthy and meeting everyone’s expectations will help you hide your lies later in life. Everyone faces moments in which they want to be stress-free. Moments where they’re tired of pressure, where they want to break free. In the book Crank by Ellen Hopkins, Kristina reinvents herself. She’s one of those people who want to break lose. That’s why she created Bree. The choices Kristina/Bree chooses to do, makes Crank a book that any teen who has felt the need to reinvent themselves needs to read.

   Kristina changes herself throughout the story. Readers can see the process of her becoming Bree throughout the book. It started off with a visit to her dad’s house, a man she hasn’t seen in a long time. She experiences a different point of view of the world. She sees a different side of herself, and that’s where she slowly gave herself away to Bree. Throughout this visit to her dad’s, she tries new stuff, stuff that she would never have done before. She tries the monster, also known as crank and meth. This was just the beginning of the ride with the monster, the crazy roller coaster, the long walk with crank. Kristina realizes that crank helps her get away from everything, all her problems and all her responsibilities. She meets Adam, her first love. Instead of helping her stay away from the monster, knowing she’ll get addicted, he drags her down the path of trouble. When Kristina comes back home, the monster would follow her. It was just summer fun, but now it will always be by her side. She needs to receive help before it’s too late, but she doesn’t take it. She doesn’t listen to her mom, Scott or her sister.

    Kristina made lots of wrong choices. She went down the wrong path and she went through a lot of trouble. She was raped by a guy named Brendan and she expresses it with words of pain and emotion. “Have you ever had so much to say that your mouth closed up tight, struggling to harness the nuclear force coalescing within your words?” Kristina says, showing how speechless and full of emotions she was after the tragedy happened. Each horrible thing that happened to Kristina, every time she took crank, every bad choice she chose to do, made a piece of her become Bree. Bree is the person inside of Kristina that wants to become free, wants to break lose and become a whole. Kristina and Bree are different, opposite people yet there stuck in the same body.

   I hope that teenagers read Crank by Ellen Hopkins not just because it is a story filled with realization and choices, but because it can be a guide and a piece of advice for the pressure in a teenagers life. Kristina wanted to change, there was expected so much from her that made Kristina become Bree. From her choices and advice from the people she loves, the reader is able to read the story knowing there are better choices they can make and paths they should follow that will lead them in the right direction.