My Sister's Keeper is a 2004 novel written by Jodi Picoult. It tells the story of thirteen-year-old Anna Fitzgerald, who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she discovers she was supposed to donate a kidney to her elder sister Kate, who is gradually dying from acute leukemia. (Wikipedia, 2019)

Kate's tamed death mentality

My Sister’s Keeper (2004) is a meaningful story about relationships in the Fitzgerald family. They respect and love each other, and enjoy every single moment of their lives together.

It is too terrible for them to accept that Kate is dying, whereas Kate is ready for her death. Her attitude toward her own death is an example of the tamed death mentality as coined by Ariès. For Kate, death is a part of her life because she suffers so much from cancer. Therefore she accepts death calmly and is prepared for it. Thus, Kate has no fear or awe or great show of emotion toward her own death.

The Fitzgerald family's emotions and attitudes toward the death of Kate

However, the rest of the family does not accept the fact that Kate is dying. This is especially true for her mom, who quit her lawyer job to take care of Kate and to do everything to keep Kate alive. This was also a reason why Anna was born. She was the “designer” baby. She was born with the mission of saving her sister by donating all parts of her body to Kate, “I wouldn’t even be alive if Kate wasn’t sick, I was made in a dish to be spare parts for Kate,” says Anna. Although Anna went through many of operations and was tested as a “medicine product” to cure her sister of cancer, she still loved her sister endlessly. Anna wanted to sue her parents for the right of her own body due to Kate's requirements. She did everything that Kate wanted even though that would make her seem like a bad, selfish kid.

Your Death - The Death of The Other

The whole family shows the great fears of “the death of the other” – the Your Death/ Thy Death mentality. "The death which is feared is no longer so much the death of the self as the death of another, fa mort de toi, thy death” (Ariès, 1974). They show a lot of emotions toward Kate's death. Additionally, they mourn for Kate’s death and can not accept the death of their family member – the death of the other. “Behavior and ceremonials were directed towards showing the deep sadness and despair associated with the loss of a beloved” (Jacobsen, 2016). Moreover, Fitzgerald’s family kept the ritual that every year on Kate’s birthday they would go to Montana – “Kate’s most favorite place.”

References

Wikipedia contributors. (2019, March 14). My Sister's Keeper (novel). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:48, May 12, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=My_Sister%27s_Keeper_(novel)&oldid=887789286

Ariès, P. (1975). Western attitudes toward death: from the Middle Ages to the present (Vol. 3). JHU Press.

Van Gennep, A. (2013). The rites of passage. Routledge.

Jacobsen, M. (2016). “Spectacular death”—Proposing a new fifth phase to Philippe Ariès’s admirable history of death. Humanities, 5(2), 19.