Two Decisions, Two Worlds

Two Decisions, Two Worlds

In the book “Rules”, by Cynthia Lord, a 12 year old girl named Catherine, has to deal with a brother, David who has autism. Unfortunately, Catherine’s family revolves around his disability, and she has trouble making new friends. Wanting her brother to learn the rules she has written for him when he just so happens to become “normal,” she also wants to start making new friends. But having a brother with autism and making new friends just don’t mix well. Catherine deals with the struggles of taking care of her brother, and taking care of her own life with friends. In the end, Catherine meets two new friends, learns to deal with how her life is with David, and decides what was right for her own life.

In this section, from the middle of the book. Catherine realises how Kristi feels about her life, which helps her realise that her life is split down the middle too. Catherine wanted to tell Kristi how it was like for her, being torn between two worlds, the regular world and David’s world. But never had the guts to open up because she was too embarrassed to share about her life with her brother. “...I wanted to tell her I know how it feels to be split down the middle, too. Pulled between the regular world of school and friends, and David’s world where none of the same things matter.” (pg. 135) This quote shows that Catherine keeps everything inside and doesn’t like to open up to people about how she feels. It also shows that she doesn’t have much freedom, from always taking care of her brother and barely having time to take care of herself, friends, and her life.

I represented this scene with my collage by showing a girl walking on the road, and suddenly having to decide which direction to go since the road go two different directions. The girl of course represents Catherine, while the roads that are split into two are leading her to two different places represents the two worlds that Catherine is torn between. The yellow dashes on the roads represents the different fears she has when both her “worlds” collide, and the fear of David embarrassing her in front of her friends and acquaintances.

The girl stands in the middle of the road, looking at the roads in front of her, trying to decided which path she should go. This represents Catherine, making decisions that are always leaving her thinking which “world” is more important to me, which life should I take care of more? Deciding between taking care of David or her own life and friends. One road in the collage would represent David’s world while the other would represent her regular world. The blue background represents the sadness she develops throughout the book, or the sadness she has whenever her friends make fun of David or when David embarrasses her. The color of the roads are black to represent the dark times she goes through whenever she just wants to breakdown. I made the lines of the roads diagonal, to represent how sometimes Catherine’s life can be a bit unstable with all the drama that happens between her and David. Finally, I decided instead of having the girl facing forward, you just see the back of her head to represent the choices that shes making. But with all the drama, chaos, and struggles in her life, Catherine continues to push on to live a happy life and finds a escape to let her calm down.

This is important because in life, we get torn in between two things, but we just usually give up and find a way to forget about it. We get torn in two but we don’t try to make things right and make those things stick together. So next time you’re in this situation where you’re torn because of fear, just remember Catherine and how she pushed on to make her two “worlds” work out and balancing it out to lead up to having a happy life.