Change of Heart
Jodi Picoult
Characters
Micheal: Micheal is one of the main characters in my book, Change of Heart. He is a college student who has to decide whether a man will be sentenced to death or will spend the rest of his life in prison. In New Hampshire there hasn't been a death penalty in fifty-eight years so this had become the talk of the town. The law office found him writing a paper for his math class and thought of him as a perfect candidate for the jury because they knew college students haven't eaten a real meal in weeks and barely had time to read the paper or talk to people about what was going on in his area. But fast forward 11 years and he has become a pastor, who still feels guilt over sentencing Shay to die by lethal injection. He goes to talk to Shay but then strange things begin to happen. Shay performs things that Jesus did in his lifetime, like turning water into wine, healing the sick and bringing the dead back to life. Throughout his time of visiting Shay he questions if he really is Jesus and why he's in the body of a killer. After Shay was killed Michael looked through his items that he had willed to him. There was a picture of him and his grandfather that was stolen from him, way before the trial. It was wrapped in Thomas's gospel, the writing Shay recited.
June: June is a woman who lost her daughter and her husband in an incident where a man, Shay Bourne, came into the house and murdered the two people while the woman wasn't home. She constantly feels lonely and is seriously mourning the loss of her family members while knowing justice lies in the hands of 12 stangers. She also has another daughter who is in the hospital, fighting a rare disease, guranteeing her death. While she awaits one daughers death she is trying to deal with the other. 11 years go by and she is asked to visit the man who killed her family. He offers his heart to her daughter, Claire but at first she turned down the offer. As soon as she realized that his offer would keep her daughter alive she accepted. Since she was letting her daughter use Shays heart she was scared her daughter would end up like him, a murder.
Shay Bourne: Shay Bourne is a murder of two innocent people and possibly, a rapist. He fooled the father and husband into thinking he was coming to fix there bathroom pipes. They have plenty of evidence on him, showing he committed the murder but still has the rights to have a trial. The scrawny, average looking man had surprised all the jury and even the people who were in his tier with his appearence because he didn't look capable of doing such a thing. He was also a quiet and pollite guy making it even harder to see him as a murder. Although when time passed the truth came out and he began to show a side of him people didn't know. He performed acts only Jesus had been known to do. One day he over heard that Claire needed a heart, and immediately said he needed to meet with the warden so he could tell him his request. Soon his lawyer had gotten him that right and even got him to reveal the real story. He was not the rapist, but Michael, the step father and husband of June had been. He walked into him raping Elizabeth and began to fight with him, trying to get his gun from him. The reason Elizabeth died was because a stray bullet hit her, not because Shay was a murder. He admitted to killing Michael because he said people like him shouldn't be alive. So in the end he was killed, but by being hung so that he could still give his heart to Claire so he could redeem himself.
Quote
Jodi Picoult
Book cover
Court room
Theme
Publisher
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