Living Through Loss

Theme Analysis

Author's Note: Everyone has to experience loss at some point in their life. I know I have. In the book Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver, Lena experiences loss but she copes with it differently than I thought she would.

At sometime in our lives, we will have to deal with loss. Loss is something that is hard to prepare for, because you will never know when it will happen. Losing someone close to you can be a difficult thing to cope with. In the book Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver, Lena is dealing with loss by struggling through the sadness, accepting the loss, and finding out the surprise loss can bring.

Loss can be a overwhelming thing. At the end of the book Delirium by Lauren Oliver, Lena’s love was shot as they tried to escape Portland, Maine. That was the last time Lena ever saw him. He was the only person she really trusted in her life. After a few days of finally realizing that her was truly gone, Lena became depressed. She was in the middle of the woods, all alone; she felt alone. I knew the same feeling three months ago when my cat died. To Lena, Alex was a beloved and trusted friend. I felt the same way about my cat. When I began to read this book, I longed to help her because at some point, you have to accept that they are never coming back.

Accepting death can be a hard thing to do. When Lena had to go back into Portland, she met a boy named Julian. Julian is an important figure in Portland because of his fathers strong belief of the procedure. Lena had spent some time with him and was starting to feel more comfortable around him because they had been captured together. Lena didn’t have enough time to think about Alex, just about keeping Julian and herself alive, knowing that all of Portland would be devastated if something happened to him. After a while of being with him, Lena had this strange feeling that she was falling for him. When I read this I was outraged. How could she get over Alex that quickly? He was her first love! It seems like she fell in love with Alex; she thinks he dies; then she falls in love with another boy! But I just read on, knowing that there would be more surprises to come.

Even the deepest wounds can heal at some point, but I didn’t know that Lena’s could heal that quickly. At the end of the book, Julian falls for Lena but then Alex comes and she finds out that he really isn’t dead. This wasn’t a surprise for me because I knew he was never dead and I knew that he had to come back. This came to Lena as a shock because the boy of her dreams had come back from the dead, or as so she thought. 

By struggling through the sadness, accepting the loss, and finding out the surprise loss can bring, Lauren Oliver explained through the story the struggle loss can bring. When I was reading, I wanted to convert Lena because i felt with loss too, but everyone deals with loss at some point in their lifetime.