She Leaves A Print That Stains Me Long After Its Faded. Just So You Know: Shame Is Five Fingered.
-Jodi Picoult
The Bonds of Sisterhood
Relationships between Kate and Anna are brought out in the book a lot, in the characters of Anna and Kate, Sara and Zanne, and Julia and Izzy. In each case, the sisters have a bond no one else shares. They rely on each other for support, like when Zanne visits to take care of Anna and Jesse, or Julia letting Izzy to move in with her, even though the two sisters don't always agree on everything. Sometimes that support just means one sister listening to the other thoughts or problems, as we see each pair of sisters do a lot of times in the novel. In the case of Anna and Kate, however, their bond is both more intense and more strained than the other pairs of sisters because of Anna’s role as a donor to Kate. From birth, Anna has served as Kate’s saviour in addition to being her sister. Both girls recognize this. Kate, though she often behaves as any big sister would, also shows immense gratitude to Anna. But Anna’s blood literally flows through Kate’s veins. Anna, for better and worse, feels so strongly connected to Kate that she compares their relationship to that of Siamese twins at one point. Her metaphor suggests that not just their lives, but also in a very real way their bodies as well, are interconnected.
The Line Between Right and Wrong
Anna’s wish to put her own interests first—specifically to live independently of Kate and to stop donating blood etc. to Kate—and her desire to put Kate’s interests first form the central conflict of the novel. The trial, which takes up a lot of the novel’s plot, is on resolving this conflict. For most of the trial’s length no easy distinction can be made between which is right and which is wrong. Anna has no legal obligation to donate her kidney, which would require surgery and carries a risk of health problems. Yet without Anna’s kidney, which Anna can live without, Kate will die. Several of the characters struggle throughout the book to determine which is the right solution, with different characters arguing different sides of the point, but no one can come up with an argument that settles the issue completely.
Appearance and Reality
Most characters in the story keep secrets from the rest of the world. Campbell hides his epilepsy and his real reasons for breaking off his relationship with Julia, Anna disguises her real reason for filing her lawsuit, and Jesse keeps his acts of arson all to himself. In doing so, each character has a deeper meaning for doing it: Campbell doesn’t want to feel vulnerable or invite pity; Anna doesn’t want to reveal why she is filing the lawsuit; and Jesse doesn’t want to be found out, as much because he doesn’t want to have to discuss the feelings, telling his parents because he doesn’t want to be punished. In each instance, the character prevents other people from knowing the real reason for her or his actions. Brian hints at this when he speaks about dark matter, which, because it emits no light, cannot be seen directly, though it can be measured by the gravitational pull it has on the objects around it. In other words, the characters in the novel create their appearances and their true feelings and actions.
Family Photographs
At some points in the book, old family photographs make characters to recall the past and reflect on the situations they, now, find themselves in. Kate, for instance, looks at a picture of herself as a baby and, recognizing the sickly cancer patient she has become, wonders who that child is. Anna says that people take childhood photographs as proof that time has passed and that they were happy once, with the pain her family feels now. At the end of the book, Kate and Sara spend hours looking at a picture of Anna, whose death made Kate’s survival possible. Often members of the family, notably Sara and Brian, will look back on these family photos and think about how those earlier versions of themselves and their loved ones seem like strangers now. This all shows how drastically the family has changed.