Sparks, Beatrice, ed. Go Ask Alice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. Print.
Disclaimer: The protagonist of this novel is fifteen-year-old girl. Some people call her Alice, but I believe that would be a mistake. At one point in the text, the girl comes across another girl named Alice in the same situation. This interaction takes only a few lines of the text, but is important to the overall theme of the book. That being said, I do not feel right calling the protagonist Alice, as she is a character in the book. I believe it would be a mistake to do so. Therefore, we will call her Anon, short for Anonymous.
Go Ask Alice, a novel based on the diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user, relays the highs and lows of an anonymous girl. Set in the 1970s, the girl--we will call her Anon for the sake of sanity--feels that she does not fit in at her school and keeps a diary to record her thoughts. Soon she starts the diary her family moves because her father, a professor, starts teaching at a new school. She does not feel as though she fits in at the new school either and gets to come back to her hometown for the summer. Anon stays with her grandparents for the summer where, at a party, she is introduced to LSD. After her first encounter with the drug she beings to experiment with other drugs and finally runs away from home. As the book goes on, she runs away from home once more before she quits using drugs. Eventually, Anon unknowingly takes acid which sends her to the hospital and then to an asylum. She comes back home, decides to stop keeping a diary and dies three weeks later. The fact that this is a diary written by a fifteen-year-old means that there are not any themes or symbols in the traditional since. Anon clearly struggles with religion and her she will fit in now that she has fallen from her “square” lifestyle.
Anon fits perfectly in Erikson's adolescent crisis of identity. Occurring between ages twelve and eighteen--Anon is fifteen going on sixteen--in Erikson's Identity vs. Confusion stage an adolescent begins to question how they fit in to their environment. This includes both home life and school life. She never seems to know who she is or how she fits in unless she is using drugs. When she is intoxicated, her senses are heightened, but she is inhibited. At the height of her drug use there seems to be a lull in the constant questioning of her place in the world. However, when she begins to fit in with the “square” kids she begins to over-think all of her actions. When her piano teacher invites her to play at an “outstanding student” concert Anon writes: “I wonder if the kids will think it’s a stupid thing to do” (203). Her crisis of identity continues until the very end of the book when she begins to feel that she is fitting in and has people who really care about her. Then she tells her diary that she will not be getting another one. Anon claims that diaries are good for young people, but as people mature they talk about their problems. Three weeks later she died of a drug overdose. During those three weeks, we do not know if she fell off the preverbal wagon or if it was an accident. Either way, the happy ending is destroyed and it seems that she did not find herself in all her trials.
Not surprisingly, as Anon goes on a roller coaster her interior monologue changes as her situation changes. It does seem that she can have a very positive outlook on life, but in contrast her outlook can be very bleak. Like any teenager, her emotions are fluctuating from one extreme to another. Sharon A. Stringer claims in her book Conflict and Connection: The Psychology of Young Adult Literature: “Psychologist emphasize that adolescence is not a period of “storm and stress.” Yet, like us, teenagers face important conflicts. Any clash inside the head influences the connection between thought and action. It can reflect the struggle to gain psychological strength as teenagers try to become their own person” (41). Anon, however, does experience “storm and stress” by placing herself in adult situations. When she is in San Francisco--the first place she runs away to--she must find a way to survive along with her friend, Chris. When she returns home, her parents accept this as her way of asserting her independence. However, later she will leave again. Anon’s range of emotional highs and lows give greater insight into her identity crisis. While she wants to please her parents, at times she criticizes their actions. These critics arise when she is sliding back into her old habits. In the end, it does seem that she has found some sort of place in the world at large. She hopes to be a social worker, has friends, and a potential boyfriend. However, the question remains: how much of that was truly fulfilling for her? Her death three weeks later suggests that she died without an identity resolution.
Clearly, Go Ask Alice is the only book by this author, but similar books edited by Beatrice Sparks include (Click on the book name for a link to the book's summary):
