Imagine Me Gone is an unforgettable story from what unfolds from an act of love and faith. The book introduces a brilliant music fanatic, Michael and the story of how over an extended period, his younger sibling Celia and tightly controller Alec struggled with their mother to take care of Michaels increasingly troubled existence (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). Adam introduces a rare thing which is the ability of people to change the outlook of things to the most important people in our lives.
Most of the cases, in Imagine Me Gone novel, brings out troubled character who are so much weighed with the changes in life. Most of them cannot fathom the reason why life can be so beautiful and at the same time so painful. They acknowledge that pain is a grief of loss. Past and future. The ordeal of daily life becomes aligned with the magnificent beauty of nature, love, and art which is music (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). All this can also have the power to instill unhappiness whereby it reaches the note that the heart pines for and also the language. Smith identifies that language illuminates a way so intense that can make a man who is about to kill himself rejoice in the precariousness of his existence.
The novel uses descriptive language in explaining the life of a suicidal young man named Michael. With his hope to escape the dependence he has over prescription of drugs, he accepted the offer to be taken to an Island off the coast of Marine by his brother Alec. It is on this particular adventure that the past unfolds whereby their father, John killed himself a decade ago (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). The demise is described to be John troubling legacy to Michael. As nostalgia of the childhood moments creeps in, the story unfolds in the presence with a scene of an ordinary life from the past and much intense with foreboding of expected death.
Adam Haslett possesses a great intriguing gift of capturing the different inner worlds of his characters and at the same time rendering them to an excellent prose. He uses the language that makes the character to articulate enough such that everyone believes that the words are theirs. From the way, Margaret, Johns wife uses homely language which is earthed in the present tense of the every day (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone).He uses Michael to portray an individual with self- consciously literary while using parody to bring out a brilliant comic effect.
He described how a child with a depressed parent might be genetically predisposed to depression as well. He owns up to the complexity and also the consequences of the things that can be genetically transferred. Haslett has introduced a brilliant representation of a mind that is under siege (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). The whole novel is full of description that involves the lives and personalities of the characters in the novel. All the characters are described according to their actions, beliefs and their lifestyle.Margaret is described as pushy American who marries a British man, John. She is so pushy such that when John mysteriously become hospitalized in London, she demands the doctor to give her an explanation. Despite the fact that John has been battling with depression which the doctor describe to be hibernating, Margaret agrees to marry him and bored him, three children. Margaret is therefore described as a homemaker, supportive and loving.
John, on the other hand, is described as someone who has been struggling with depression since he was a child. One day when on the Marine Island, he involved his children in a dangerous game. It turns out that he could not fight his beasts anymore and he committed suicide (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). He was a family man all the same since he marries Margaret, fathered three children and moved the family to the states. Elia who was the only daughter is described as a level-headed youth counselor in San Francisco. She is strong and supportive and takes care of her vulnerable brother Michael. Alec is identified as the younger brother who becomes an idealist journalist. He is described to worry on everything that is around him be it money, parents and siblings. He took it upon himself to take Michael to the Marine Island to calm himself down.
Michael is described as capacious but tormented. Being the first born child of John and Margaret who is thought to have acquire the depression of his father through hereditary. It is around him that the whole characters and the novel revolve in an attempt to prevent the same demise that happened to their father to happen to Michael (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). Despite his torment, Michael is described as manipulative, charming and intelligent. He sought transitional solace in Klonopin, women and also house music. He pulled strings of tough breaks and decided to go to Michigan for a graduate program in African- American studies after which the trick failed, and he decided to move in with Margaret near Boston.
Haslett described him as a compulsive consciousness which is raw and restless. If medication assuages him, he becomes prone to harrowing anxiety which the author gives with manic urgency. Michael transcribes the voice mails messages that he might need later and afterward spins the disturbing fictions features that he visualizes of Alec, sex trafficking and voyages (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). Michael exposes an avalanche of languages whereby he deluded and exhausted chronicles which are often related to the experiences that he underwent in his life.
When Michael chooses a subject to conduct some scrutiny, he visions becomes hyperacute to an ex-lover and damning relentless. If he trains his gaze on an ex- lover, he carries out a self-aggrandizing study whereby he becomes thrilled by every detail he thinks he has seen. Afterward, he catalogs them and analysis them for advice (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). His instability in mind leads him to ignore all the sensible advice, and at the end, he acts in self-destructive ways. Haslett uses his descriptive language to put the readers in the same position as that of Michaels family. The language allows the reader to feel what the other person is feeling by identifying their frustrations, hope, fear, protectiveness and also an obligation.
The author identifies that Michaels thoughts and actions can lead to glue some dread if they are laid bare. When he is out of peoples sight, what he thinks and his whereabouts become unknown and afterward the dread that follows become unbearable (Haslett, Imagine Me Gone). The language sneaks on the readers dark and winning humor addressing the poignant tenderness and lifting the spirit even when they have become awfully sad.
The description of language helps the reader to understand the characters own feeling and their concern of how they are going to leave their loved ones. The characters help the reader to learn that even though there is the predictable disappointment of love, the expense of empathy and peoples tendency to care for one another is warranted. Haslett introduces the fact that we make different choices and carry out some behaviors, the constant slouching towards compassion is fully out of obligation.
Work cited
Haslett, Adam. Imagine Me Gone: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2016. Internet resource.
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