Belonging In The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster

In the book The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, Ellen is an orphan who must overcome the death of her mother and the suicide of her father. While she must overcome her grief, she is inevitably bound to go to Harvard University, the only conundrum is that she has no money whatsoever to pay for her well-deserved education. The only possible funds she has are the rent coming from her old home, which is now being rented. Her aunt, who treated her very badly, was in fact the person receiving this money, and Ellen wasn’t getting a single cent. Ellen doesn’t know how to react when she discovers this, when her mother had passed she did everything she could to achieve what she wanted and push herself to her limits to become the best

Stuart’s gift helps her to understand that “home” does not need to be defined within her grief, and she does not need to trap herself in it. “Inside the sack was a doorknob,” I recognized. We had a glass one like this. Did you take it off my old house for me?...He reached over and turned the doorknob a touch and said, It was on the outside, and you’ve wanted something from there for a long time is the main reason. Then hearing how everything’s stirred up again with your aunt, I said to myself, Ellen needs me to give her the doorknob so she can shut all the rooms and close her old house. Don’t take it the wrong way, but you live in it so much of the time is what I see.” (pages 134,135) In this quote Stuart shares a very powerful message to Ellen that will help her be able to push through this grief instead of accepting she must live in it. Ellen is a very smart girl, so if it takes Stuart having to tell her something like this, she is the most unaware person in the world. Ellen did not realize that this attachment to her old house, her old self, was what was holding her back from her future and taking charge of the opportunities placed in front of