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Elena Vanishing Character Analysis

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Anorexia can cause many losses in a person 's life, but losing a baby because of the mental illness is one of the extremes. In Elena Vanishing, Elena loses her baby due to her anorexic lifestyle. With the loss of her daugter, Elena starts to understand what this illness is really doing to her life. And with this new sense of being, Elena finds a way to push away the anorexia thoughts and the manipulating voices that haunt her. During Elena’s fight with anorexia she loses her daughter, and because of this, she loses the fear she once had for the voices in her mind. On Elena’s journey through the recovery of her illness, she loses her baby daughter. Elena refused to eat or consume the nutrients she needed. In this she not only starved herself …show more content…

An example of this is when Elena finally finds the will to go get help at a rehabilitation center. After signing herself up, the voice who has always haunted her starts to tell her that going is a bad idea. But Elena stays strong and fights the voice to honor her daughter, “You’ll spend six months in an institution, says the voice in my head, with a tube up your nose to feed you. Well, maybe I do need to spend six months in an institution. Maybe I really do need a tube up my nose”(Dunkle 175). Elena’s new courage triggered by the loss of her baby allows her to fight the voice in her head. Elena starts to feel more awake than ever and is ready to recover. She starts to see past the anorexia and notice what the disease has been doing to her. This feeling empowers her to fight and try and make it up to her baby girl. While at the rehabilitation center Elena makes progress but is still visited by her dreaded thoughts. Even though the thoughts bring her down and make it hard she finds a way to make it through. An example of this is when the voice visits her during lunchtime at the center. As the voice warns her, Elena keeps pushing and knows that the only way to recover is to completely ignore it, “Five cups of Caesar salad! shrieks the voice in my head. Five cups at least! There’s no room for it all. You’ll pop! Your belly will pop! Terror floods me and I have to close my eyes as I eat so I …show more content…

After losing her daughter she is drowned by her guilt of killing her baby. In an attempt to make it up to her baby she fights the tempting voices and submits herself to a rehabilitation center. In moments of weakness, Elena focuses on the remembrance of her baby girl to ignore the voices and finally recovers. Elena may have lost many things due to her illness, but the loss of her baby made her lose something good, her fear of

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