Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

               The novel Little Women published in 1868, teaches an extremely important lesson: Life does not always turn out how you originally plan it. The main character Jo has aspired to be a writer her entire life. She has published a few short stories in newspapers, but nothing to her satisfaction. Although in the end, she does not end up writing for a living, like she always plans, she gets married to a professor and they start a boarding school for boys and have a family. This is just one example out of many in the novel where life takes you on a different course than you originally expect. At a certain point in everyone’s lives they have goals, something they want to accomplish, or somewhere they want to go. This is amazing and gives life purpose, although accomplishing these things will not make us happy if we are not happy within ourselves. This is a piece of advice I have been given more times than I can count, although it was not until after I read Little Women that I actually started listening.

            Along the way to getting to where you want to go there will be many pit stops where you lose track of who are and what you want to do. It is so easy to lose track of what is truly important in life. The thing that most people do not understand when going through this is that it happens to everyone. This book taught me that these pit stops are essential to get where you want to go. How you handle getting back on the correct path defines who you are as a person and can make getting to that destination even more important and more satisfactory that it would have been before. In the book the March family lost a daughter when she was very young and reading about it was devastating because you could feel the pain of each character as they dealt with it in their own ways. Although the truth is that even though I hated to see Beth die, most of the characters would not have reached their full potential if she did not. Now they had something to fight for

No matter how much you may want to at certain times, you cannot go through life on your own. Little Women shows the importance of family and friends, not only through the tragedies, but also more importantly through the successes. There are very few people that will ever be there for you no matter what and when you do find them you need to hold on to them. You can never achieve what you want in life on your own, you have to have people in your corner who support you but are not afraid to tell you the truth. Everyone needs someone in their life who will give them constructive criticism. For Jo this was her father and her mother. Her father helped her with writing and her mother helped her with personal problems. This is a metaphor for balance in life. Balance is incredibly important especially in this day and age where it is so easy to get tipped over.

            Family values have been steadily decreasing for a long time now. Most families do not eat together at a table and make conversation; most families do not share the good and bad parts about their days; most families do not trust or respect each other. Personally I find this very sad because even though a lot of the times they drive me insane, I have no idea what I would do without my family. The idea of family is losing value as times go on. Who your family is does not matter so much as long as you have someone who loves you unconditionally. No family is perfect, but if one were it would be the family that Louisa May Alcott created when she wrote the novel. The March family went through so many hardships that would tear most people apart, but it only made them stronger and that is what a family should be.

            At the end of Little Women everyone was happy and in their “Castles in the sky”. Life does not always end happy, but it will if you want it to. You decide if you are happy or not. It is a conscious choice that everyone makes everyday and it is never too late. All of these little moments and insignificant events in life are adding up to this huge grand finale. Everything is intertwined and everything happens for a reason. Bad things happen, but that does not mean you can walk around with a grudge against the world, you just have to look at the bigger picture and realize that everything is meant to be.

              Little Women is a beautiful book that is surprisingly relatable. All of the characters are different parts of who everyone is with good and bad traits, but they are all there for each other no matter what.