Go Ask Alice (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
By SparkNotes
()
About this ebook
Making the reading experience fun!
Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides: chapter-by-chapter analysis
explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols
a review quiz and essay topics
Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers.
Read more from Spark Notes
Much Ado About Nothing (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBird by Bird (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Romeo & Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tempest (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Lear: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard III (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Like It (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romeo and Juliet: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Julius Caesar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchant of Venice: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of Solitude (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTempest: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard II (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlas Shrugged SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Outsiders (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Winter's Tale (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Measure for Measure (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Othello (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry V (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Gentlemen of Verona (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDune (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Raisin in the Sun (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Lear (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51984 SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchant of Venice (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Comedy of Errors (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry IV Parts One and Two (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Julius Caesar: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Go Ask Alice (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
Related ebooks
If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood Summary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret Life of Bees | Summary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret Life of Bees (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Cautious Plan: The Shady Pines Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Handy Candy Man: Solving The 1960 Cold Case Of Alice L. Lee Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHarmony at Sundown: A Caregiver's Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrue Crime - Aileen Wuornos: The Horrifying Story of the Female Serial Killer that Terrorized Humanity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Dorothy E. Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of The Secret Life of Bees: by Sue Monk Kidd | Includes Analysis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Black Hand:Poisoner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDream World: Tales of American Life in the 20th Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You a memoir by Lucinda Williams Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWalk Two Moons (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Black Maze Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary and Analysis: If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFamily Secrets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerely a Madness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Alice Walker's The Color Purple Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Alice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLisa Lee: Serenity House Series Book 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Color Purple (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIf You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen: Conversation Starters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSinister Intent: Book 2 in the #1 bestselling Red Dust Novel Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA SpeedReader Summary and Analysis of Lisa Genova’s Still Alice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReturn to the Bay: Baby Girl Book 6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of The Elissas by Samantha Leach: Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide (New Edition) for Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Godmother's Apprentice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Spite Of Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Falconer Files Brief Cases Books 5 - 8: The Falconer Files Brief Cases Collections, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Book Notes For You
Summary of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill: Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of Ichiro Kishimi's and Fumitake Koga's book: The Courage to Be Disliked: Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Workbook for The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counter intuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by John Gottman: Conversation Starters Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Summary: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe 5 AM Club Summary: Business Book Summaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Poverty, by America By Matthew Desmond Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Workbook for Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi: Summary by Fireside Reads Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of How to Know a Person By David Brooks: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Go Ask Alice (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Go Ask Alice (SparkNotes Literature Guide) - SparkNotes
Go Ask Alice
Anonymous
© 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing
This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC
Spark Publishing
A Division of Barnes & Noble
120 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
www.sparknotes.com /
ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7527-4
Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com/.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Context
Plot Overview
Character List
Analysis of Major Characters
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Sept. 16-Dec. 25
Jan. 1-July 14
July 20-Sept. 10
Sept. 12-Nov. 22
Nov. 23-Feb. 24
Feb. 27-End of Diary One
Diary Two: Apr. 6-May 21
May 22-July 3
Undated (July)
July 27-Epilogue
Important Quotations Explained
Key Facts
Study Questions and Suggested Essay Topics
Review & Resources
Context
While some people believe that Go Ask Alice is not a true diary after all, but the wholly or partly fictional work of Beatrice Sparks (one of the book's editors and the author of several fictional teen diaries
), the diary indisputably evokes the drug and sex-saturated atmosphere of the late 1960s. After several underground and some mainstream movements—think of Elvis Presley, James Dean, and the Beat writers—punctured the conformist bubble of the 1950s, the baby-boomers of the 1960s were ready to join the revolution. Easier access to drugs and birth control and an unpopular war in Vietnam only solidified their desires as they followed the mantra of mad scientist Timothy Leary to tune in, turn on, and drop out. Society was divided along generational lines between the powerful establishment of old, white men and the insurgent counterculture.
Alice is caught in the midst of the societal struggle, and her diary reflects her experiences and feelings. She harbors conventional bourgeois aspirations, such as marriage, and also disdains the hypocrisy of the establishment that makes it easier for minors to acquire illegal drugs than alcohol. She grows long, straight hippie-style hair and uses the informal language of the counterculture (e.g. Dig, man?
) Her experiments with drugs—including marijuana, the one she has heard so much about, and LSD—are the substances that privileged white teens had newfound access to in the 60s, and her sexual exploits exhibit the new Sexual Revolution. Still, the book is oddly sealed off from the rest of 60s culture. Alice hardly mentions listening to music, not once naming artists like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, or even The Beatles as contributors to societal or personal protest and experimentation. More glaring is the omission if the Vietnam war, discussed only briefly between Alice and her father; Alice's most political act is attending an unspecified rally where she does drugs. While this may simply have been Alice's route, many supposed rebels in the counterculture did little more than jump on the bandwagon and use revolutionary politics as an excuse for hedonism.
Go Ask Alice is also an epistolary work, a narrative constructed by letters (in this case, diary entries). Many of the earliest novels in the English language were epistolary—Samuel Richardson's Pamela, for instance—and Go Ask Alice adapts the style for its modern needs. Assuming the book is a real diary, Alice is presented to us as she really was, with observations and experiences both dramatic and insignificant, as her life unfolds naturally. If the book is fictional, or a fictionalized diary, the author still allows Alice to speak in her own highly plausible language, with a first-person account that makes her experiences, foreign to some readers, sympathetic and realistic. In the tradition of other first-person coming-of-age novels, such as Mark Twain's ##Huckleberry Finn# J.D. Salinger's ##The Catcher in the Rye# and Russell Banks's Rule of the Bone, Alice speaks directly to the reader. As is Salinger's underlying intent of having the alienated Holden Caulfield connect most deeply with his reader, Alice (or Beatrice Sparks—and it doesn't really matter in the end) fulfills her goal of becoming a social worker through her first-person direct address.
Plot Overview
An unnamed fifteen-year-old diarist, whom the novel's title refers to as Alice, starts a diary. With a sensitive, observant style, she records her adolescent woes: she worries about what her crush Roger thinks of her; she loathes her weight gain; she fears her budding sexuality; she is uncomfortable at school; she has difficulty relating to her parents. Alice's father, a college professor, accepts a teaching position at a different college and the family will move at the start of the new year, which cheers Alice up.
The move is difficult. While the rest of her family adjusts to the new town, Alice feels like an outcast at school. Soon she meets Beth, a Jewish neighbor, and the two become fast friends. Beth leaves for summer camp and Alice goes to live with her grandparents. She is bored, but reunites with an old friend,