40 pages • 1 hour read
Jenny DownhamBefore I Die
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Patterns
Tessa often notices patterns. Watching people going about their ordinary business on the street after she has just escaped from the hospital, she thinks, “We make patterns, we share moments. Sometimes I think I’m the only one to see it” (266). Near the book’s end, when she is on the verge of dying, she finds meaning in the way separate events in her life have formed the pattern of her existence: “Moments. All gathering towards this one” (327).
This abstract thinking echoes Tessa’s need to find preciousness and meaning in the randomness of life, a need that healthy people do not have. She sees patterns as things that people create, in order to impose meaning on chaos.
The Natural World
Tessa looks to the natural world as a way to understand her own condition. Images of decay fascinate her—for example, the dead rook that her brother Cal buries in Chapter 19—as do images of creation and renewal. Near the end of her life, she ruminates on the creation of the universe:
the big bang was the origin of the solar system and only then was the earth formed and only then could life appear and after all the rain and fire had gone fish came then insects amphibians dinosaurs mammals birds primates hominids and finally humans. (320)
Such musings are Tessa’s attempt to wrest some meaning out of her illness. While her illness seems as chaotic and arbitrary to her as the creation of the universe, she also hopes that her own impending destruction can create life and renewal elsewhere. In a letter that she writes to her father near the end of her life, she requests to be buried in a biodegradable coffin, so that “wild plants and flowers” and a “native tree” can be planted near her grave (284).
Storms and Clouds
Tessa is drawn to unpredictable weather. Early in the book, while she is ill but still ambulatory, she sneaks out of her family’s house and drives without a license through a thunderstorm. While her best friend Zoey is terrified in the passenger seat, Tessa is exhilarated and impervious in the raging elements. For once, she feels that her illness gives her an edge, in that it makes her invulnerable to the fears that healthy people experience.
Later, when Tessa is on her deathbed, she senses the calm sunny day outside her bedroom window: “The sound of a bird flying low across the garden. Then nothing. Nothing. A cloud passes. Nothing again” (327). This quiet scene disturbs Tessa more than any thunderstorm because it reminds her of her impending death. She would rather experience the life-affirming chaos of stormy weather, which echoes her own turbulent emotions, than resign herself to the silence of a sunny day.
