Like the flower daphne, the moon is as dangerous as it is beautiful. Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer, is a realistic fiction novel describing one catastrophic event after another. Like all people, Miranda (the main character and narrator) and her family want to get through every obstacle in life. Unfortunately, things start plummeting downhill when a large asteroid knocks the moon very close to Earth. The characters fight for survival as they are faced with natural disasters and family feuds. Miranda makes it through, learning a very important lesson in the process. The theme of Life As We Knew It is to keep hope and persevere, believing things will get better, because it calms, motivates, and strengthens you. Hope and perseverance kept Miranda calm throughout many parts of the book, especially in the beginning. One example is in chapter four, on May 22, May 24, and May 25. Miranda is starting to feel the severity of the crisis and becomes stressed. To keep herself calm, Miranda tells herself that when Matt, her brother, gets home from college, everything will be alright. On page 48, May 23, …show more content…
In the last chapter, chapter 21, Miranda is clinging to every last bit of hope she can get. She is just about to give up when the last strand of hope appears, floating around on a yellow flyer. On page 332, Miranda wrote, “But it was yellow. I had to have it.” Miranda chases the yellow paper with newfound strength, doing everything she could to grab it. When Miranda finally picked it up, she couldn’t believe her eyes: paper read, “City Hall Open Fridays 2-4 PM.” Miranda’s strength swelled once more, and with much difficulty, she dragged herself to City Hall. There, Miranda was extremely surprised and ecstatic beyond words to find people and food, something everyone needed. Without hope, Miranda would have had no strength to make it to City Hall. Therefore, keeping hope and perseverance is the theme of Life As We Knew