In the narrative Maximum Ride Forever written by James Patterson, the story of Maximum Ride, the main character and our protagonist, who is a mutant with both the ability to fly, and the ability to breathe underwater, and her flock who are also mutants, and their plights in a post-apocalyptic world. In this book, they begin by being forced to leave their little island in the pacific and travel in order to escape the eruption of the volcano there. They go back to the real world, where they had lived and fought together pre-apocalypse to try to save the world, and the flock then splits up due to their differing ideas of where to go. Throughout this book, they are hunted by super powerful horsemen, because the Remedy, a psychopathic doctor who …show more content…
This theme becomes evident near the end of the book, but first there needs to be some background. In the beginning of the book, a member of the flock named Dylan died in a volcanic eruption, and the only thing that the flock found was a smoking shoe. As talked of previously, there is a horseman hunting down the flock at this point in time. The Horseman is Dylan, a genetically altered Dylan, who is stronger, faster, and with more endurance. Through the book, he has killed all of the flock except for Max and Angel. Max wakes up next to Harry, and senses something wrong. She sees a kid with wings and recognizes him. He comes up to her and gives her an extended hug. She loves the contact of her old flock member: “When he folded me into a hug, I loved the way he squeezed me a little too tight, held on a little too long.” (261) As shown here, she is reunited with one of the people that she loves, and she is clearly happy. Then, she sees Angel, and Angel runs into her, knocking her over, “I was so relieved to be holding her like this, so grateful to have my littlest girl back with me that I didn’t want to speak.”(263) She also feels a great deal of relief and happiness at seeing Angel, as exemplified by the word grateful. Dylan had faked all of the deaths of the flock, because the …show more content…
Throughout the book, Patterson makes the flock grow closer together, tears them apart, and brings them back together in time for the final battle for the survival of the planet. This progression not only represents the plot of the book, it also serves as the progression of family throughout the book. Despite the fact that author does all of these things, the author also allows each of the characters to have or induct someone new into their own family, and to build or rebuild relationships with them. These relationships not only fit into the plotline leading up to the final battle, it also adds to the theme that your family might not always be immediate, or lab bred, or knowing one another enough so that everyone cares about each other, but also that sometime we may find a friend, and go through some experiences with them that lead to an incredible amount of trust between one another. The fact that they rejoin at the end of the book brings the theme full circle, and the fact that fate brought it about in the book shows that sometimes rejoining