Letting Ana Go Essay

The book “Letting Ana Go” is a realistic fiction book sold anonymously as if it was written by the person in the story, which it is not. This book is about a girl named Ana. Ana’s parents are always fighting especially about her mum’s weight and soon they get separated. She ends but living with her mum who is an emotional wreck after the divorce. Ana’s best friend, Jill, is a ballerina. With the horrible stands for ballerinas Jill goes on a diet and takes it too far. Jill is anorexic. Jill and her mother convince Ana’s to “support” Jill threw this diet. Being the amazing friend she was, she did. Soon, Ana was faster but she was breaking. Ana falls in love with Jill’s brother and what she thinks he wants of her adds the stress. She gets worse …show more content…
Ana is a track runner, her coach asks that everyone on the team track their food. Before Ana’s parents separated, she was not anorexic but her best friend Jill was. When her parents broke up, and she slowly starting eating less. While Ana is trying to earn back her calories when spring arrives, and Ana is invited to go with Jill’s family go on a vacation. Jill gets all kind of “support” from her mother to eat less and so does Ana. In the book it says, “Susan turn to leave, then stopped and looked back at me: And you are a good friend. Jill tells me you’ve been keeping track of your calories, too. It’s always easier when you’ve got support.” Ana was getting better she was tracking her calories to get more. But once Jill’s mom (Susan) had said such nice things, how could she not continue dieting. Ana was so happy someone as gorgeous as Susan would say such nice things. That wasn’t the only “support” she was getting. Jill’s goal became 1700 calories a day and the goal only being 300 off from Ana’s she asked Ana to do it with her. Ana agreed, and it began. Ana got worse and worse she lost pounds and pounds until she started to hate herself. She didn’t she was skinny enough, she was forced to leave track for a little and people were becoming concerned. Ana occasionally slipped and no one was truly there for her. Her best friend kept telling her to eat less and less, lose more …show more content…
For example, when they were on spring break Susan, Jill’s mum said, “But you hang in there, and keep doing what you’re doing. All that baby fat has disappeared, and if you keep at it, you’ll be turning every head in the hallway come fall. Jack will have his work cut out for him.” Here Susan is telling Ana that the more weight she loses the more the boy she likes will like her, the more everyone will like her. Susan is saying that thinner is always better. This is exactly what Ana wanted to hear. She wanted to hear that Jack would like her more but by hearing that losing more weight would make this happen was all she needed to get dangerous. Not only then but on the night of homecoming she had lost so much weight to fit into a smaller size of a dress because it would look good on her. When Jack saw her his reaction was enough to make her think this was the right way to be going. He did not say anything, in the book it says, “The look on Jack’s face when he picked me up for the dance was priceless.” It also says, “I took his breath away.” These two reactions made Ana think that because she had gotten to 110 pounds that now he thought she was beautiful. These two reactions made her believe that the thinner she was, the more he would love her. This shows we only care what others think. We do