In honor of the Turtles All the Way Down movie trailer being released, I dug up this old book report on it. I have very few (if any besides this one) assignments from k-12. Unfortunately, I did not transfer the contents from my school email before I lost it. It's a touchy subject. Anyways... I had made a point of putting this assignment into my personal drive because I was really proud of it. The last edit was made on January 9th, 2020. All the quotes were taken from my quote journal. When a book really inspires me, I go back through it when I have finished reading it to write down my favorite quotes. I usually do this with books involving anxiety or mental health. Disclaimer: 2024 Ella can write a lot better than 2020 Ella can. Still, I love looking back and seeing my growth.
*Spoilers ahead*
Summary of Book:
Turtles All the Way Down is about a young girl named Aza, who suffers from OCD and anxiety. Aza and her best friend, Daisy, chase a tail on a mystery in town, which ultimately becomes more of a side plot. In the miss of investigating, Aza reunites with her old friend, Davis; they begin a romance, that fails in the end partly due to Aza’s OCD. Throughout the story Aza goes to therapy to talk about her “intrusive thoughts” and spirals; these thoughts are constantly shown throughout the story, showing what it is like to live with OCD. One day, Daisy and Aza are in fight and get in a car accident, this event leads to worsening anxiety, but also room to get through it.
Identify and describe a connection to your life, and how this text-to-self connection deepens your self-knowledge, and your understanding of the text.
Since 6th grade, anxiety has made an impact on my life. 9th grade is when I really got diagnosed with anxiety. My therapist said that I have an anxiety disorder with flavors of depression. Anxiety is constantly present in my everyday life, as it is in Aza’s life. Aza has OCD, a type of anxiety disorder. This is not exactly what I have, but I can relate to her thinking patterns that are illustrated throughout the book. During one of Aza’s therapy sessions, her therapist says, “...I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy” (Green 89). I myself have not considered my anxiety crazy, but similarly I have used a world to try and define my anxiety. In therapy, I would say that I felt broken, that all the feelings I had made me a false human model, that I wasn’t normal. This however is not true, my therapist pointed out; just like Aza’s therapist asked her to use a different word. Reading Turtles All The Way Down has really inspired me and has been an amazing journey. I connected on such a deep level with this book, that I would say it’s my favorite. The way John Green writes about all Aza’s thoughts from her point of view is extremely effective for a reader of any kind to understand anxiety and OCD. As a person with anxiety I understand where her thoughts are coming from and make me think of my own thoughts.
Identify and describe a connection to another text, and how that text-to-text connection deepens your understanding of both texts
A book that is similar to Turtles All The Way Down is We Were Liars. They both display friendship and mental health. Aza was OCD, while Cadence has memory loss from her accident and PTSD. The authors of the two books use figurative language like imagery and metaphor to further explain and show how mental disorders can affect your life. In Turtles All The Way Down, when Aza in therapy, her therapist said, “One of the challenges with pain- physical or psychic is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or body can” (Green 89). This idea is represented in both stories. With Aza, she talks about her spirals and the demon that lives inside her head. Cadence talks about the pain she gets from her migraines. In one scene Cadence uses imagery to describe what it feels like, “The witch swings the statue again and hits above my right ear, smashing my skull” (Lockhard 77). This is an amazing imagery and is highly effective for the reader to understand what Cadence is going through. Through figurative language, a lot can be learned about the book and characters (narrator).
Are there any recurrent images or clusters of images? Do these images support the idea or theme that you find in the work? (If so, they may be symbols.)
The theme in this book is that there is no miracle cure for mental illness, it doesn’t just disappear. Throughout the story one image definitely stands out: the spiral that never ends. Aza goes throughs these periods were her mind just keeps going further and further into itself, and each obsessive thought turns into another. This is also represented through the story mentioned on page 245. Daisy tells Aza the story and says, “You’re trying to find the turtle at the bottom of the pile, but that’s not how it works.” Aza responds, “Because it’s turtles all the way down…” Not only is this the title of the book, but it is also another way to imagine the spirals that Aza goes through. When she thinks and thinks, she can never find the bottom where it just stops. This supports the theme because it’s Aza’s realization that her thoughts don’t just stop. There is no end to them, and there is no end to her mental disorder; there is only learning to adapt.
One more example of images is near the end of the book. This moment is not quite recurring, but represents what Aza has been through (that we can see in the story). When Daisy and Aza are talking about the time she went “crazy” (she drank hand sanitizer, hoping it would help with the germs she thought were polluting her body), Daisy said “...a lot has happened since you lost your mind”. Aza responds “‘Actually, the problem is that I can’t lose my mind,’ I said. ‘It’s inescapable’” (Green 240). This quote has more meaning, when it comes back in later pages. The girls are in a sewer with headlamps to see. Aza turns hers off and tells Daisy to do the same. Once in the dark, Aza says “You don’t decide who you like or where you live or when you eat or what you fear. You’re just stuck in there, totally alone, in this darkness. That’s scary”(Green 263). “‘This,‘ I said, turning off my light again, ‘is what I feel like when I’m scared’” (Green 263). Aza is trying to show Daisy how it feels to be stuck in her head, to keep going down these spirals. She uses a metaphor, with her surroundings to help daisy imagine, just how scary it is to live with OCD.
Comments