Discussions and Spoilers*** Please read prior to posting/reading

[Annalisa]

Grace wrote: "I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point. I wonder if someone will eventually earn a PhD by writing a thesis on this interpretation. "

Okay :). So when do you think the hallucination starts? When they leave the hospital, or I guess when Dulcie gives him the mission? I can't remember if there are any other scenes between him talking to Gonzo and talking to Dulcie. It was just too much of a miraculous recovery for me to believe it was anything other than a hallucination (mostly that they took out the respirator which they turned off at the end). There's a natural break in the novel there too that made me feel as though I were moving into a new section, but I don't own the book to go back and see where someone else could think the hallucination started.

[Grace]

Annalisa wrote: "Okay :). So when do you think the hallucination starts? When they leave the hospital, or I guess when Dulcie gives him the mission? I can't remember if there are any other scenes between him talking to Gonzo and talking to Dulcie."

I believe the hallucinations start before he's admitted to hospital - but they happen only occasionally. I think the first one is in Chapter 5, Wherein I Have a Very Strange Encounter While Stoned and Employ a Frying Pan in My Defense. "A blur of white zips past the open doorway into the kitchen." Of course, he's stoned and thinks that's why he saw something that's not there. It's actually, I think, his first glimpse of Dulcie. He sees her a few more times before he's hospitalized - along with the fire monster. Those hallucinations are short-lived and are some of the symptoms of his illness.

When he's in the hospital, he's lucid initially - we know that because he's able to keep track of the time. When he crashes he has a brief hallucination at the end of Chapter 13 before he loses consciousness. He regains consciousness in Chapter 14 and is lucid for the whole chapter and that's when he talks to Gonzo. The 'tipping point' occurs in Chapter 15 when Dulcie precipitates his quest. (Note, there's nothing to indicate how much time elapses from the end of Chapter 14 to the beginning of Chapter 15.) From there on most of what we read is his hallucination. He has brief episodes when he's lucid. They correspond to sleep cycles in his hallucination - and they're probably brief intervals of consciousness in the real world when he is aware of his nurse and his family.

Although he met Gonzo earlier, he really didn't know him well - he just knew Gonzo was a dwarf. We needed the sequence in Chapter 14 for him to learn more about Gonzo's "health issues". Also, notice he twists things around about who is neurotic concerning Gonzo's health when he objects to including Gonzo on his quest when Dulcie suggests it.

[Annalisa]

Grace,
I get that the hallucinations about Dulcie and the fire monsters are hallucinations. I was just wondering when you thought the tipping point was. I'm still going to have to disagree with you though :). Sure we need Gonzo's health issues as a metaphor for Cameron not living his life and social commentary about hypochondria, but it doesn't need to be the real Gonzo with those issues. We just need to be introduced to the story element, whether fantastical or real. I thought it too coincidental that someone he knew would end up in his hospital room (which should be intensive care and Gonzo not an intensive care patient). That scene and that Gonzo already had an over-the-top flair that didn't line up with Gonzo in the bathroom, which I agree Cameron didn't know too well, but I think that's the point. He rejected Gonzo's attempt at friendship. This was his chance to redo that moment and make a friend.

I'm curious how the breathing tube factors into your theory. Cameron's condition is degenerative, so even though he has semi-lucid moments all the way to the end, his physical condition is always deteriorating. Once they put the breathing tube in in Chapter 13, wouldn't that be the end of his capability to breathe on his own? From what I understood, he slipped into a coma at that point (the crash was pretty drastic). After that, the people in the room with him weren't even aware he was having semi-lucid moments. The scene with Gonzo is the only one where he is healthy enough to interact, his condition seeming to have backtracked a few days. The breathing tube is there through the end when they flip it off, so why wouldn't it be there when he's talking to Gonzo?

[Christine]

I think the point is not whether it is a hallucination or not, but that (like Schrodinger's cat) it's both a hallucination and not a hallucination. Cameron is constructing his own reality.

[Angie, YA lovin mod!!]

After finishing the book I concluded it was all a hallucination. I never really got the point of the old lady across the hall... she just seemed thrown into the book. I thought she was an unnecessary character.

[Polkweed]

I think the old lady is the concept of the afterlife in Cameron's hallucination. She has a plan for how she wants her death to be; in the hospital we assume it's the act of passing but with the visions Cameron has of her later it could easily be the place where she is after death. Cameron is so focused on his fight for survival he never really thinks about what comes next if he doesn't live. So during the attacks both in the fantasy and reality that bring Cameron step by step closer to death he doesn't see a white light or a golden gate. He goes to the only heaven that has been described for him (and for the reader): the little old lady's house by the sea. And each time the woman asks him if he's ready and accepts that he is not because when Cameron has fully acknowledged and accepted his death he goes to what he thinks the afterlife is, not what the old lady thinks.

[Brooke]

Betsy wrote: "I am going to go on record now as saying I was not a fan of this book. I just couldn't get into it. I didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them. And I didn't think the adv..."

I hated it. Stopped reading it after 100 pages. And I love Libba Bray!

[Brooke]

I gave this book 100 pages and had to quit. I thought the dialogue was lame and insulting to teens. I thought the characters were exagerated and hard to relate too....I thought the plot was slow...zzz. Too bad, I was so excited to read this after reading Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle series.. three of my favorite books.

[Brooke]

Shauna wrote: "Maybe I am just a prude, but I couldn't get passed all the swearing. One of the reasons I read Young Adult fiction is so I don't have to deal with language and sexual inuendos."

Agreed. It's just unnessesary in liturature. I don't need such realism in my reading life. I always have a hard time when a 40-something author tries to write like a teen and comes of insulting teenagers and slang.

[Grace]

Annalisa wrote: "Once they put the breathing tube in in Chapter 13, wouldn't that be the end of his capability to breathe on his own? "
I understood that he recovered enough to breathe on his own - for a while at least - in Chapter 14.