Tangled Together

Tangled
Different Point of Views: Skye and Jena

According to the story “Tangled” written by Carolyn Mackler, there are many perspectives rotating around it. The ones that I find the most appealing are Skye’s and Jena’s. Since they live under different conditions, they tend to think things in different ways. It’s fascinating because I’ve realized how unlike people can view the same things.

To begin, Jena views Skye as a perfect, rich goddess that everyone admires. She has a cute boyfriend, goes to a classy private school, and has a mother who lives off of her grandpa’s oil trust fund that could last for decades. Not just that, Skye is also an actress that has been on numerous of films and commercials. She has a nice body and knows celebrities. Jena basically thinks that Skye is gorgeous and lives a wealthy life. She could get anything she wants before she even wanted it. She often desires to become like Skye because she is plain and thinks that she has no appeals to males.

On the other side, Skye compares herself to a day without sunlight. She feels that she can’t do anything the way she wants it to be. Unlike what Jena had thought at the beginning, she broke up with her awesome boyfriend who immediately found a new girl. Because she got so miserable seeing them together hugging and kissing the whole time she was at school, she decided to drop out and be home-schooled. She doesn’t really even have friends because she’s always practicing her lines or preparing for an audition. Sure, she’s been in many films but she mostly got the small parts. She went to tons of auditions but there’s probably only a few that actually gave her callbacks. And when she finally got the role she wanted, she’s forced to decide whether or not it was worth the consequences. She also often compares herself to other girls that went to the same auditions as her so that she can calculate her chances of getting a part. Her dad has died before she was born which she was told was because of a motorcycle accident, but she’s starting to learn some secrets behind it that her mother failed to inform her about.

I find the book attention-grabbing because the author puts several perspectives onto one book to show how different people would react to the same things. They are all somehow tangled together. I get to see both sides of the story, and I find it really interesting how Skye’s life is completely different from how Jena describes it. Without Skye’s story, I would have thought like Jena that she has a flawless life. This makes me think that how readers feel about the situation in a book also directly relates to how the characters feel about the situation because we see the scenes through their minds, their voices. These different points of views made me realize how reality could be totally unlike how you may have imaged it as. Through their perspectives, I can also conclude that money can’t buy happiness and that you can’t judge things solely by their covers and how you interpret it. Both sides give a different feel to the readers too. With Jena’s side, there is an envious, jealous mood to it, while on Skye’s side; it has this depressing and heartbreaking mood to it. It’s important to have these points of views to furthermore understand the story and dig deeper.

All in all, I get to see different sides of a character through different perspectives. Skye’s life is actually more ripped than Jena views it. To add on, the rotation of different point of views from this book is also similar to “Heartbeat” by Loretta Ellsworth. In reality, parents often lie to their children so that they only have to bare the pain by themselves. They don’t want to share their stress with the kids. We may think that they are happy but they may not be. If we knew their perspectives then we would also be able to understand the situation more. Too bad our lives aren’t like books.