John Neufeld is the author of “Lisa Bright & Dark”. He lives and works in New York City these days. He was educated at Yale. His style of writing is usually touching stories. Finding information about John Neufeld is quite difficult since the Internet nor the book has provided any help whatsoever.
Lisa Shilling is the main character of this book. She is just sixteen as she slowly loses her mind. Lisa is quite an example of a teenager with problems which is why she’d be classified as a very real character. Her dangerous state of mind reflects the realism that this does happen. Her moods are forever changing. Lisa’s motivation as a teenager is to live her life normally.
This is hard to do since she is in need of help. Many can relate to Lisa and her illness because it is among teenagers today. Her mother and father snub her off completely overlooking her serious unstableness. Luckily, she has friends that care enough to help her. The main conflict of this book is the struggle to convince Lisa’s parents that she is ill and needs serious help.
Her parents did not pay attention in the beginning when Lisa started to act a little different. This is rather understandable. Lisa was in school and pricked herself with a needle that drew blood. Many told Lisa’s stubborn parents that she needed a psychiatrist. They simply refused to accept the fact that their daughter was in need of anything. When Lisa even screamed out that she needed help, they simply wouldn’t understand. She even walked right through a glass window.
Her parents didn’t understand until it was almost too late. The conflict was finally resolved after they got her the help she was in need of. This is an example of man verse himself since the conflict deals with Lisa fighting her illness. This book type is about a social problem. This means that a dilemma occurred in the social area.
In this case, it involved Lisa Shilling and her struggle with society and her illness. One example of this social problem would be the fact that society such as Lisa’s classmates were uneducated about her problem so they didn’t understand her. Another example would be how Lisa’s parents were too busy with their life to notice their daughter’s plea for help. Yet another example would be how the teachers and guidance tried to look around the problem. Today, the same social problems are still faced.
The book’s theme dealt with mental illness and treating it. It was about Lisa and her problems. This book showed that the perplexing problem could be treated right just as long as she got the right help. Her friends were the main people to help her overcome it all. It can be seen that this situation was very difficult then and now. The moral of this story is based on the illness of a girl and society’s impact on her.
It goes to show that she was helped and hurt at the same time. This passage caught my eye. It’s a moment of shock and surprise caused by Lisa’s illness. This is a sudden outburst no one was prepared for. They handled it well under those circumstances. Lisa had shoved Elizabeth toward the dying fire, and had jumped on her in one movement. She began hitting Elizabeth’s face, then changed her attack and began punching Elizabeth everywhere she could – her sides, her stomach, kicking at her legs, grabbing her by the hair. It was terrifying.
