The Running Dream Character Analysis

Have you ever had an enormous change in your life that made you a better person than you were before? The book “The Running Dream” by Wendelin Van Draanen provides many examples of change, mainly shown by the main character, Jessica: a recent below knee amputee who thinks she’ll never run again. After the accident that almost took her life, she realizes that sometimes things happen for a reason. When the book starts, Jessica is in the hospital, recovering from the recent surgery on her leg, that had to get cut off due to a car accident. While she is at the hospital, she can barely make it to the bathroom and only thinks about how upset she is to have lost her leg. However, when she get’s home, although her attitude doesn’t change right away, it get’s a bit better because, her best friend Fiona is working on a plan. Finally Fiona calls one day, saying she is going to take Jessica out to lunch. Jessica gets mad at herself and starts hopping up the stairs. Eventually making it up, she get’s into the shower, and starts on how she wishes she had given up a hand instead, but then she starts to remember everything she does with both hands and thinks “My mind wanders all over …show more content…
When she first goes back to school, she is assigned to sit next to Rosa a “special needs girl” with cerebral paisley. When she is first asked to sit next to Rosa, her reaction is “Do people think I’m special needs now? Is that how they see me? No! They can’t!” (106) This example of Jessica being afraid of being judged by sitting next to someone who has a special need is important because later she says something that totally contradicts her earlier statement, “that’s all anybody with a disability wants. Don’t sum up the person based on what you see or don’t understand; get to know them.” (308) Rosa changed Jessica for the better. She was a big part of Jessica being who she was at the end of the book, and made her overall a better