Reading Response for More Than This

This book brings up some interesting ideas, including the idea that the world could actually be very different than what we perceive it to be. In this story, the main character finds that his entire life hasn’t been real. It has only sort-of existed as the online invention that came about after his parents ‘restarted’ their life online after his little brother died in the real world in order to live in a place where he would still be ‘alive’ although not really, because he’s generated by a computer. The entire plot of this story makes the reader consider and think about how much of life and our world could actually, possibly, be an illusion. And how not having all of the truth known, or not knowing about a certain aspect of life and memories can ultimately change your entire life if you finally recognize what is changing in your life.

This story also often deals with the theme of trust and how friends are not as trusting and honest as originally thought. All the people that are introduced in the second half of the book have plenty of secrets from their previous life in the world that everyone was living in that was not reality, that they were not going to share. The main character also has problems trusting his friends or family, anyone he meets, because he blames himself for his brother’s death, or in the other world, brain injuries. He feels like he completely let down his family when he let the murderer into their house. After that, his mother neglected him and no longer trusted him, because he was easier to blame for all of the awful events that followed that decision.

And what caused the main character’s issues with trust were the problems that were going on in his family. Because his family is so torn apart and then messily pieced back together with a fake reality, it is a little bit messed up. Still. The father is attempting to shut out what is going on through taking a lot of antidepressants and often being completely absent from his family simply because he is not quite there from all of the antidepressants that he is trying to use to solve problems that can’t quite be solved with drugs. He is not present in the family dynamic. However the mother essentially runs the household and dotes on her younger son, possibly knowing subconsciously that this was her second chance to even have two sons. Unfortunately she neglects to treat her other son in the same way and openly blames him for what happened to Owen, the younger brother, who also does not entirely count as a part of the family due to the fact that he is computer-generated. All of these issues create and shape the plot of the story.