In 2012, 3.3 million deaths, or over 5.9 percent of all global deaths were attributed to alcohol consumption. And as we see, since 2012, these numbers still continue to increase.According to these percentages, alcoholism has become a very major problem in our generation. Yet despite the warnings, people still continue to drink and slowly harm themselves. In our day to day lives, we see people drink on social media very often. Though it may seem like fun and games to everyone, Maddie Fynn in the novel When doesn’t view her alcohol addicted mother this way. It had been just her and her mother living together ever since her father died after he was murdered, and her mother had become increasingly worse as the years drove on. In one instance, …show more content…
Then she moved past me towards the stairs like coming home stumbling drunk wasn’t a big deal. “I’m going up for a bath. There’s leftover spaghetti in the fridge if you’re hungry.” (pg.104)This incident in particular is just a glimpse of the neglect Maddie receives from her mother daily. She was basically a mother to her “Ma”.Whenever Maddie’s mother goes out, she doesn’t come home and it causes Maddie to worry. As she searches the town in the middle of the night, she still can’t find her, so she just decides to go home. Upon walking in the door,”My eyes were adjusted to the darkness by then and I could see Ma’s sleeping form on the linoleum floor. I felt a sudden and unexpected surge of anger. I was so sick of all this that I wanted to scream.”(pg.96)Her mother had been binge drinking and couldn’t even take care of herself, therefore putting it on Maddie to care for her yet again.After her father’s death Maddie began to think, ”Ma didn’t blame herself for Dad’s death.She blamed …show more content…
Maddie can see people’s deathdates, and in order for her and her mother to get by, she reads them for people. Maddie tells us that ”after every reading, Ma hits the bottle hard because I know she understands how difficult it is for me. And yet she’s never told me to stop. She simply continues to pretend that I’m doing a good thing, and I continue to pretend that it doesn’t bother me.”(pg.22)This shows us that her mother can see how hard it is for her, but she still chooses to make Maddie do it. Another instance is whenever Ma is in jail because she was driving drunk and she says to Donny, “What if she says no to rehab?Ma had said no to getting help plenty of times in the past. She was the only one who didn’t think she had a problem she couldn’t fix on her own.”(pg.227)Her mother yet again could choose whether to change for Maddie or