​ y: Adam Labno

“Rundown” Short Story Analysis Essay B

Life Is like running on a track, driving on a highway or even walking your dog, your moving

forward, unless you walk your dog backwards in that case you're kinda weird. This woman is

Ally Condie, A New York Best Seller’s author who has had one hell of a teenage life. This story

takes us through the good times, like when her sister “Hope” is born, or when she meets her new

best friend “Justin” and when she graduates highschool and runs a marathon. But the bad is not

far behind of her teenage life; Like when she was 12 years old and her grandfather passed away,

or when she was in high school and she went through a huge medical problem or that time her

father broke his hand and couldn’t work and provide for the family! Or the time that she had

collected a severe medical problem and couldn’t run and even all the time and all the months she

lost in a deep highschool depression.

In the short story “Rundown” Ally Condie uses First Person Point Of View and Flashbacks to

show that no matter what you’re going through right now, you will get out of it.

This whole story would’ve never been as deep or as good if she didn’t use this point of view!: in

this story, we are Ally Condie. We are taken through this story as her! We can feel what she’s

feeling, we can literally see what she’s going through.

I cried all the way through the funeral service, and my aunt has to pass tissues down the row to

me. I knew I would cry, but I didn’t understand until this moment how it feels to be unable to

stop.” That’s so good because we see what she’s thinking, we see what’s she’s going through and

how she’s handling it.

For example A, when she loses her grandfather, we feel her loss, we know what she’s going

through because we’re feeling that too. When she goes into a depression we can feel the sadness

that she feels, when justin tries to help her we know what he’s feeling cause we can all relate to

that moment! And when she finally feels better and the story ends we feel happy for her because

we got a happy ending for ourselves too!

“When we run the marathon in October, it’s not easy for either Justin or me, but we both finish. I

wish I could tell my grandfather. He would have been so proud” That would never be as good if

she wrote it in third person, it’s good to see her emotions growing, it’s just amazing First Person

Point of View

Like when we go back to when she was 12, we see through her 12 year old eyes of her

grandfather’s death, and we see flashbacks to them being so close. By buying muffins and going

on fun dinners. We see how close they were and we see how painful his death is to her.

For example of her flashbacks, one of the first we get is “When I’m twelve years old, my

grandfather dies. My grandfather and I are close, but not so close that I understand he is dying

until he is dead.”. This is clearly a flashback, and a pretty good one. This flashback shows us

how she was close with her grandfather and is a huge part of the story.

Or like when she gets flashbacks to when her sister is being born, and the flashbacks of her

mother loving to hike, move and run, and her being stuck is a little annoying to her. Plus the

point that 80% of this story is just one big flashback!!!

If I could copy and paste 80% of this story into this I would, But here’s another pretty important

flashback; “A few weeks after my grandfather dies, my mother has to go to the hospital and stay

there for a long time. This is because she’s pregnant with twins.”This takes her back when her
twin sisters were born, and when one died. This is another great flashback and it adds the the

greater good of the story by showing us more of her past and more of why the characters are like

they are today.

In “Rundown” we experience key points in Ally Conde’s life, her grandfathers death at 12 until

all the way to her highschool depression, we see her pain with her flashbacks and First person

point of view

it teaches the people who are going through these kinds of loss and depression that it gets better

To me, this was an amazing memoir and really got a really good purpose, and I hope whoever is

running down this road of life, eventually gets out of the bad parts