Still Alice

Family plays a prominent role in Still Alice, not only as a grounding mechanism but also as a source of tension and development. All of the major characters are members of Alice’s family; there are a number of ancillary characters, but with the possible exception of Dr. Davis, we spend very little time with any of them, underscoring the importance of family for the purposes of this text. The death of her mother and sister haunt Alice, and her diagnosis now shares a date with that fateful day; further, even after she forgets her current family, those memories still remain, and she becomes that child once again. The deaths of Alice’s sister and her mother were her father’s fault, and  she realizes that her father’s incoherence late in life wasn’t alcoholism, but rather Alzheimer’s. Further, the most fully developed of her children, Lydia, is a source of tension for her, both because of their own fighting and because of the different beliefs she and John have about how to approach Lydia. As the novel progresses, tension grows between her and John, as well—she needs her husband as support, but he is unable to provide that support, instead growing distant.