I missed the deadline for DEADLINE

So sorry readers for not posting my respond to Deadline sooner. I've been too busy reading and responding to your blogs to post my own reflections on the reading.   Will try to be better this week!

I have been thinking about everything my fellow LTED 629 readers have been saying about Deadline (positive and negative) and while I appreciate those who feel there was a lot going on in the novel -- maybe too much to seem believable -- in my own experiences I grew up with a kid (and others in the class) who were struggling with many of the same issues.   While I don't know think I knew anyone who was spending time with a person who was homeless, an alcoholic, and a self-admitted pedophile... in my class (which totaled 128 students), I knew of at least three kids who were getting beaten up regularly by their parents, another classmate whose father was dying and his mother was an alcoholic, still another whose father harangued him publicly at wrestling matches if he didn't win and we were sure beat him at home when he didn't, five seniors who died in a single car crash, and even still another girl who [although we didn't find out about it until years after high school] was being sexually abused by her father.  

It may be due to the fact that I went to a smaller high school in a small town where people tended to be the second, third, or even fourth generation of graduates from the same school..... but I do not think it is so impossible that a teen could be struggling with how to deal with all of the issues and how they are affecting those close to him or her.  

What I think is most interesting about this book though is the question of "truthfulness."   In the beginning of the book, Ben doesn't want to tell his family about his illness because he doesn't want to burden them.   He doesn't want to tell his brother or his coach because he wants to play football.   He doesn't want to tell Dallas because he doesn't want her to pity him.   He doesn't want to tell his teacher Mr. Lambeer because then he will be able to dismiss his "class antics" as a sign of acting out rather than because he seriously finds Lambeer to be a racist and anti-democratic. 

There is a passage on page 280 that I really like.  Ben is reflecting on the situation at hand (which has gotten a bit out of hand) and he says....

"...all my trouble so far has come from being the little control freak I am, deciding who should hear what when and trying to control other people's emotions by what I say.   It's become clearer and clearer it's just disrespectful to not let people deal with things in a straightforward manner.  When I'm lying on that bed on my last day, I want a clean slate."

I think that the issue of "control" (or lack there of) is certainly a universal human condition.   We want to know everything and we want everything we know to be true.  True = constant, never changing, forever the same, imminently reliable.  Unfortunately, truth is relative.    

Coming from this perpective about truth, what I find most redeeming about the way the book ends (because of course I hate the fact that Ben has to die) is that there is a great deal more "truth-telling" and living life "outloud" by all the people that Ben was close to.  Both of his parents were much more honest and open about their personal struggles and dreams, certainly Dallas and Cody are living life to the fullest.   Even Mr. Lambeer had to stop and reconsider his own ideas about whether or not someone can be wiser simply because they are older (have more experience, p. 295).