Mia Hall's If I Stay

Would you want to continue to live if all your family was dead? Is that a decision you would want to make yourself, or would you like someone else to make it for you? In the book if i stay, by Gayle Forman, Mia Hall is a 17-year-old cellist with loving parents, and a younger brother. She lives in Oregon, and spends her time playing her cello, and hanging out with her rocker boyfriend, Adam, and best friend, Kim. Mia is very talented and has the prospect of going to Juilliard in the fall. That is forgotten when a snow day leads to a car accident, where Mia’s mother and father are killed, and her brother, Teddy, is rushed to the hospital in serious medical condition. Mia’s body is also in critical care, but her spirit, which is now outside of …show more content…
The book gives you this lovely scene of Kim, where she goes down to the small chapel in the hospital, to talk to Mia. In this scene, Mia watches Kim pray for the first time. At the end of her prayer Kim says “Please don’t die. I can understand why you’d want to, but think about this: if you die, there’s going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school, where everyone puts flowers and candles and notes next to your locker...I know you’d hate that kind of thing.” (67-68) The movie leaves this scene out completely. In the movie, we are just told that Mia and Kim are best friends, but the book shows us how that friendship started. Their relationship started off with a deep loathing of each other. In a flashback Mia says “I felt compelled to give myself a reason why I hated Kim:” (70) She then goes on to tell us that Kim was the first one to call her a bitch “In English class, someone flung a folded-up square of notebook paper onto the floor next to my right foot. I picked it up and opened it. It read Bitch! Nobody had ever called me that before” (70) This is what lead to their fight “But that fall day we fought with fists.” (72) After the fight was broken up they laughed and have been best friends since. Finally the book shows us just how well Kim knows Mia, when Kim leaves the hospital, and goes and gets Adam, and brings him to her. Mia …show more content…
However, the book shows more of Gramps which gives us more of a connection with him. One of the things that the book spends more time on is Mia’s trip to audition at Juilliard. The book explains how Gramps ended up taking Mia. Her Grandmother was planning to take her but then she injured her ankle and could not go. Mia explains, “It was Gramps who insisted on taking me. We drove down together in his pickup truck.” (49) The movie didn’t explain to us how Gramps ended up being the one to take Mia. The movie did however include this lovely scene where Gramps listened to Mia play during the audition, which did allow for some connection between Mia and Gramps. Yet again the book gives us more connection when Gramps visits Mia in the hospital. Mia’s ghost watches as Gran and Gramps come in “...Gramps sees me and he strides across the floor to my bed. ‘Hello Duck,’ her says. He hasn’t called me that in ages, not since i was younger than Teddy.”(80) Him calling her this “pet” name show their connection and closeness, as well as give us just a sweet moment between them. In the movie we are show a scene, where Gramps tells Mia it is okay to go, and if that is what she wants to do, he will understand. The book has the same scene, and Mia says, “Gramps doesn't wipe his face or blow his nose. He just lets the tears fall where they may. And when the well of grief is momentarily dry, he steps forward and kisses me on