Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-90.217.61.70-20190829112132

Sophie Foster:

'''In the beginning, she is shown as a timid young girl who is confused by all that is happening to her (though later in that series, a lot of that changes). You can understand as she is a twelve year old in senior in high school, who has been offered a role in Yale University. Not to mention the fact that she can hear everyone's thoughts and how much they dislike her. Her anxiety is displayed in her eyelash tugging, though I am unsure whether or not that classifies as a flaw or a mental health issue. They are two seperate things and shouldn’t be mistaken for one another. A mental health issue is not something you can change, and if so, not without professional help. A flaw, on the other hand, can be changed by the person possessing the flaw, looking at different experiences that alter their view on the way they act. She manages to cope with what she is going through and we later learn she has since she was five years old and bumped her head, waking up in a hospital surrounded by wires (leading to her dislike and fear of doctors). During her school trip to the museum, she sees a young man reading a newspaper article about her, which her parents protested to be posted on the front page. He confronts Sophie and asks if it’s her on the front and she, quite appropriately, becomes worried and runs away. At the beginning, I quite like Sophie’s character: she is nervous and apprehensive about her future and upset about having to give up a whole life to start a new one. We can all understand the feeling of having to give something up and the confusion that change can bring. Most people have experienced loss and the way Sophie shows all of these emotions makes her lovable and gives us a connection to her. We feel the pain she does and this is where we gain our first connection to her. When she goes into her new family, she feels like she doesn’t belong, which is also something that we can build upon (later in the series, making her feel more comfortable). Her longing to fit in makes her relatable. Now, onto her positive traits in the book. She tries extremely hard to fit in and work in all of her classes, showing us that she is quite resilient. However, her goofy ability to be in the Healing Center far too often adds a quality to her that shows she is clumsy (though this soon escalates to a Healing Center trip is a very bad thing). She is strong in the sense that she pushes past her hard times and in the sense that she stands up when Marella takes Jolie’s death lightly, as though to her, it isn’t too big of a deal (though I can’t wrap my head around why most elves act like that. Surely because it is such a rare thing it would be devastating for everyone and the pain of the death would be carried along. I think the excuse for it is that it has happened so rarely that nobody understands how painful it is unless you’re close to the one who died, though I don’t think that would be true. The book stresses how different the glorious elves are to humans but the way the elves react to death seems more like how humans would. If someone’s grandad had died, you would of course feel sympathetic but you aren’t feeling the exact pain the person related to the grandad feels, unless you are remembering about it if you’ve been through the same thing. Even then, our sadness and sorrow fades as the days grow on, no matter how close we were to the person. Any everlasting effects should surely hint towards speaking to a therapist or someone about the issue, which is honestly what Grady and Edaline would have done about Jolie if they were human). However, the understanding of loss Sophie has gets thrown out of the window when she later learns that Grady and Edaline had started her adoption but then cancelled it. Without attempting to understand their reason to cancel her adoption, she instead becomes angry at them and uses Jolie, their dead daughter, as an insult. To me, this does not seem like something her character would have done and it was shallow. Not long before, she had been talking about how hard loss was and that people should respect those who are grieving more and that they should understand how painful it is. Then, she is throwing around the idea of death like it means nothing. To make it even worse, she threw it at two of the few elves who had experienced it. The sincere, kind girl who wanted to fit in became cruel and angry, without even thinking about why they wanted to cancel her adoption. I didn’t really see that coming or maybe the reckless behaviour when she took Gildie and disobeyed everything Alden had asked her to do. Nor did I really see the Telepathic cheating on her alchemy test, though I admire her honesty and think that was very ‘in her character’. However, her behaviour towards Grady and Edaline (as well as Fitz and Biana with the whole friendship thing, even though they apologised and told her how much they wanted to be her friend then) made me dislike her and made her seem like a bit of a spoiled brat. She became quite selfish and not at all understanding, making it look as though she was only worried about her own struggles, even though her friends and everyone else also had them. I tried very hard to understand the way she was acting and how she saw the world. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it, though. Despite everything she was going through, I couldn’t understand how she could be so blatantly rude and cruel towards the people who were offering to house her. Another aspect of her that annoyed me was her curiosity, which she always seemed to take too far. Alden had warned her and Grady but when they got angry at her, it seemed as though she was expecting an apology from them, even though she was the one who pushed them. '''

'''That’s all I can remember about Sophie’s character for now. I was unsure about her character at first but it’s the beginning of a book, so there is still a lot of time for her to develop and break out of her flaws. '''  