Self-Liberation in Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper

This thesis discusses self-liberation in Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. The novel represents people especially teenagers who want to liberate themselves from power parents’ treatment, unfair parent’s treatment, fear and feeling guilty, to get medial emancipation and through sisterhood. This study is library research and applies mimetic theory proposed by Abrams saying that literature is an imitation of the real world. The analysis is focused on the liberation from power parents’ treatment, unfair parents’ treatment, fear and feeling guilty, to get medial emancipation through sisterhood. Liberation from parents' power is represented by Anna where she liberates herself by suing her mother, Sara, because she controls her body by making her as a donor to save her sister, Kate, who was suffering from acute anemia. Liberation from parents’ unfair treatment is represented by Anna and Jesse. Anna feels that she is treated unfairly by her mother because her mother gives a birth to Anna just because Kate needs a donor and Jesse feels that he is treated unfairly because he does not get his parents’ attention. Liberation from fear and feeling guilty is represented by Sara and Campbell. Sara who is initially afraid of losing her daughter, Kate, is finally able to accept the reality because she knows that is what Kate wants and she feels guilty for does not know Kate's desire. She also feels guilty when Anna died because she had made Anna as a donor for Kate. Campbell liberates himself from his fear and overthinking, he realizes that he has been wrong for hiding his epilepsy from the people around him, especially Julia. Liberation to get medical emancipation is represented by Anna and Kate. Anna wants to liberate herself to get medical emancipation so she can survive without having to donate anything else to Kate. Kate wants to liberate herself to get her medical emancipation through Anna to refuse any kind of medical treatment because of giving up living. Liberation through sisterhood is represented by Anna who liberates herself because her sister, Kate, forbades her to donate her kidney so Kate can go peacefully and Anna can live a normal life without having to worry about Kate anymore. Anna believes that only she understands and is able to grant her sister's wish. In conclusion, the author, Jodi Picoult in her novel My Sister’s Keeper vividly portrays the condition of people who have right to possess their bodies lives, even though they have to take legal action to sue families to get mutual understanding and advantages.