My Brother's...or Sister's...Keeper

*PLOT SPOILER ALERT*

Teach for America invited me tonight to a pre-screening of the film "My Sister's Keeper" at the Grove. The film's writer raised some pertinent questions about the issues of freedom and the meaning of life in the script. Afterward, I had the chance to discuss the film with my roommate, David, in both a Christian and a non-Christian context. I am going to attempt to discuss these "hot topic" issues from several points of view. Pardon my paraphrasing at times...but I think I did comprehend the most important points of the film enough to analyze it.

There are two main questions related to the issue of freedom that arise in the film. The first could read, "Is it right to freely forsake all opportunities to regain health and choose one's own certain death in the context of one's immense suffering?" The doctor applied practically all treatments to the leukemia-laden older sister, Kate, and all failed. There was at least one hope left, of course: her younger sister would be a perfect match to donate a kidney, which she needed because hers had both failed. At that point, however, Kate comments that her mother would eventually have her "chopped into so many pieces we can't even count...2,000 petri dishes full of Kate..." And this all presumably to keep her body from fully succumbing to cancer. In other words, Kate's mother will go so far as to reduce her to nothing in her quest to keep her from dying of cancer. And frankly, Kate's had enough of the pain, the brokenness, and the destruction of her body merely to keep it alive. She doesn't want the kidney transplant that would restore her endocrine system. She tells her baby sister, "It's come to the end," and she implies that her family needs to accept it.

To be continued tomorrow...