Character Analysis Of Alice From 'Gran's Gramps'

Alice- The main character, named Alice, is the narrator of the book and starts out as the average teenager, crushing on a boy named Roger and dwelling on her insecurities. She experiments with drugs in attempt to escape from her loneliness.

Alice’s Parents- Alice’s father is a professor, and her mother is a homemaker. Both of Alice’s parents care deeply for her, but are poor at communicating with her.

Siblings- Alice has two younger siblings, Alexandria and Tim. At some points, Alice is jealous of her siblings because they are better adjusted than she is. Alice’s “Gran” and “Gramps” are both very dear to the family. Alice spends a summer with them, and they visit for holidays.

Joel is a freshman at the college that Alice’s father works at.

She returns to school and resists drugs from her old “friends”. Eventually, the two girls relapse. The police raid Chris’s house on page 98 and the girls are on probation. Alice continues to use drugs and hitchhikes to Denver, then to Oregon, then to Southern California. Once again, she vows to stop using drugs on page 102.

Alice comes back home. Her grandfather dies on page 136 after having a stroke. She feels socially isolated, because she doesn’t want to associate with the drug users, but isn’t wanted in other groups. Alice meets a college freshmen named Joel, who goes to the college where Alice’s father works. The drug users at school harass Alice and try to pressure her to relapse. Alice’s grandmother dies on page 155.

On page 163, Alice wakes up in the hospital, confused on how she got there. She finds out that someone had dosed her food with LSD while she was babysitting, and she had started acting crazy. She is sent to an insane asylum on page 175, which drains her. Alice’s father finds a way to get Alice out early from the asylum. Alice goes back home, and is even accepted in a group of “normal” kids.

In the epilogue, Alice died three weeks later from an overdose, and was one of thousands of drug deaths that