Relation to a Poem
The novel, Choker, by Elizabeth Woods and the poem, My Imaginary Friend, by C.J. Heck portray similar messages regarding the reverse role of imaginary friends. Specifically, both pieces shed light on the fact that, overtime, imaginary friends begin to burden and torment their creators. To begin, Woods depicts Cara’s imaginary friend as unruly and defiant, disrupting the order and normality of her everyday life. This concept is evident when Cara arrives home one evening only to find that her room has been wrecked at the hands of Zoe herself. After coming to this realization she exclaims, “‘Zoe, you can’t just go snooping around during the day when no one’s here,’ …show more content…
Specifically, his friend began to act strange, misbehaving and getting him into trouble. He interprets this transition as so, “But sometimes Sherla spilled my milk, sometimes she wrote on walls, sometimes she told me not to come when Mom and Daddy called. I had to have a talk with her about being a naughty kid, cause I’m the one who got time out for all the things she did” (Heck). Touching upon this, Heck witnesses Sherla’s mischief, including “spill[ing] [his] milk, “[writing] on walls,” and disobeying his “Mom and Daddy”. It is due to these actions that Sherla is a “naughty kid”, constantly putting Heck in “time out for all the things she did”. In addition to Heck, Cara too must face consequences for the misbehavior of Zoe, her imaginary friend. And although they are not real, Zoe and Sherla possess their creators in such a way that they unknowingly partake in acts of devilment, leading only to their inevitable punishment. In Heck’s case, he faced lectures and “time out[s]” from his parents as a result of Sherla’s actions. Cara, however, faces a larger, more severe consequence involving criminal conviction if Zoe does, in fact, play a part in Alexis’s disappearance. In conclusion, both Woods and Heck utilize the concept of imaginary friends to portray the retribution faced by the beholder as a result of their friend’s