Ask the passengers essay

Essay on Ask the Passengers

Naomi Giancola 802

            Ask the Passengers, by A.S. King, is about a teenage girl named, Astrid, who lives in a small minded town where is you are different, you are cut out, isolated, and ignored. She moved from the city in the suburbs when she was little but she never quite fit in. She has two best friends that she knows are gay but they aren’t out to the school yet. Along with trying to figure out who she is, she has to deal with all the craziness of her home and the fact that if she is gay the reaction she will get from her parents. Astrid shows the struggle of trying to figure out who you are and having to deal with all of the other stuff going in your life.

            Astrid is trying to figure out what her sexuality is and the people around her are making it so much more confusing for her, for example, “If I were to explain to you how she really makes me feel, I’m not sure I could. Do I lover her? I don’t know. Maybe.” Astrid works at this place that prepared food for fancy occasions and she works with this girl named Dee. Dee is gay and she knows it and the two of them are definitely more than friends but Astrid is just so confused about her self she’s not even sure if she loves the person she really loves. “They say: Mom would never forgive you if your gay.” Astrid has to deal with the fact that her parents would never really accept her if she was gay and that is getting in the way of her figuring out what she is. “I look into my eyes again in the mirror. I can see her there- the me who’s waiting to come out. The me who doesn’t have to send her love away.” Astrid’s friend, Kristina, is pressuring her out of the closet because she thinks she knows that Astrid is gay. Astrid isn’t ready though and it’s making it so much harder to figure out who she is when she is being pressured to choose.

Another way she is having trouble figuring out who she is is that the place she lives in has a very set image on how people should act, for example, “They stop and say hello, and then once you pass, they talk back off like you were nothing. They assess your out-fit, your hairstyle, and they garble what you say so it comes out ugly.” The people in her town, Unity Valley, are very judgmental and Astrid doesn’t want to be judge or be judged, she just wants to be who she is. “This whole town is frozen in time. Stuck in one place. Motionless.” Astrid thinks this because every year, her family gets a not from the KKK along with some nice packaged mints and try to get them to join, and its 2011. Not only do they have the KKK but they also have people who believe that the Holocaust was a fake and never really happened or was planned. Astrid can’t really even be her self because of all the hate she would get from the people who know her.

            Astrid is confused about who she is just like so many teens right now. A.S. King shows how hard it is to be yourself when people want to think for you and not give you the chance to be yourself. Astrid shows that when you are stuck in one spot you have to give you a push and try to get out and move on and be you. Many teens now are confused about who they are and this book can help and show that it’s okay to be who you want to be and not who you are told to be.