Reality Vs. Illusions In Canadian Literature

Characters change; they are different from the start of the book and slowly grow as a person in the end. This is portrayed through the exploration of many common themes in Canadian literature including Reality vs. Illusions. Characters prefer illusions over reality in many ways; it has the ability to affect their thinking and their relationships with others. Michael Christie’s novel ‘If I Fall, If I Die’ helps demonstrate the theme ‘giving up our illusions and facing reality by picking ourselves up again is what life is all about’. The main character, Will, lived in illusions all his life within the safety of his home and the comfort of his mother’s presence. However Illusions can’t always keep you safe, facing up to reality is a challenging …show more content…
Growing up Will was told how dark and dangerous the outside was but one day, a noise in the backyard prompts him to take a step to venturing outside. As will took his first step, the narrator writes, “the boy steeped Outside, and he did not die . . . His hair did not spring into flame . . . Actually, incredibly: nothing happened” (Christie 3). Will was expecting something unsafe to occur but nothing went wrong. Later he meets a boy around the same age who he immediately befriends and talks to him about the outside. The boy tells him, “there’s nothing to be scared of out here . . . nothing can really hurt you, Will” (Christie 10). This gave Will confidence to go out and explore. In the following weeks, he goes from poking around his neighborhood to getting his mom to enroll him in school which led him to meet a friend named Jonah. His excitement for the Outside and his curiosity about the boy’s life provoked him to break all barriers of his mother’s and his illusions. His life changed completely, “Overall, the Outside was utterly boring and utterly astonishing at once and exceeded Will’s capacity to investigate it” (Christie ). He was so comfortable to where he got use to going