Prompt B: Character Development (Breaking Night)

The main character in this book is none other than the author herself, Liz Murray. She changes thoroughly throughout this novel in many different ways as she straightens her priorities and learns a few life lessons. She is a fully development, round and dynamic character.

In the beginning Liz is a girl in a broken home. Born to two drug addicts, Liz is neglected and left alone. She cares for nothing and no one. She tries to feel accepted and special but doesn't ever really feel that way. School becomes the last of her priorities as she skips classes and gets failing grades. She has unexcused absences and during school hours, ends up aimlessly wandering the streets. This quote from the text shows just that... "Ms. Murray is not in regular attendance in school... I hadn't been to school in weeks, and I already knew what the message was going to say" (Murray 160). What really shocks me as a reader is that she erases the message even before it is heard by her parents. That shows that she really does not care.

Throughout the novel she interacts with many people. Her parents, her friends and her boyfriend. In the beginning her and her mom have a distant relationship but it slowly grows stronger, However when her friends come in the picture, her and her mom's bond is broken and she feels only real remorse after she dies. Her dad and her are always fairy distant and stay distant until the very end of the book. Her friends are what really changed her though. In the beginning of the novel what her friends did and said didn't really impact her. She just went along her own way. But as she grew older she started ditching class with them, and doing things she shouldn't have. When she ran away she stayed at their homes. What really changed her, though, was her boyfriend. He made her so happy and impacted everything she did. They ran away together, lived together, and supported each other. However, when he started getting on drugs and abusing her she knew she had to turn her life around.

Near the end of the novel Liz Murray becomes more respectable, and more ethical. She knows what she wants and she does it. She isn't one to shy away from anything she desires and works hard for it. In this case, it's a good education and great grades. She tries to find a school which will accept her even though she has barely any credits and is a little to old to go to high school. But she tries. And at the end she finds a school that will accept her, works very hard, and then finds herself being admitted into the most prestigious of all Ivy schools, Harvard.

She changes. She learns to hope, to dream. She learns that she can make a difference and that she can make her own future. She learns that hard work pays off and she learns that she can be whoever she wants to be. And that no one can stop her from achieving her dreams.

"The rapid changes I had experienced were hitting me hard as I sat there, and yet sadness wasn't what came up in my gut. Out of nowhere, for some reason, a different feeling snuck up in its place, hope. If life could change for the worst, I thought, then maybe it could change for the better. It was possible I could get into the next school, and it was even possible I could get straight A's. Yes, based on all the things that had happened before it wasn't necessarily realistic, but it was possible I could change everything. I ditched the idea of pizza and went for the interview"
~ Liz Murray

Here's a quick Breaking Night Article on how exactly this wondrous person turned her life around. It gives you snippets of her difficult life and what she does to change it. It tell us how she went through the unimaginable, and still came out on top.