The Girls

1. The Girls Lori Lansens By: Rachel Martin

2. Cooperation “Sometime after that, Aunt Lovey put my doll and ruby’s doll at separate ends of the room.” (9)

3. Cooperation: Growing up as craniopaugus twins Rose and Ruby had to do everything together. They had no choice but to cooperate and work together to get things done because going two separate ways wouldn’t work for them. Aunt Lovey understood this and started from a young age teaching them how to cooperate, she started with just putting there two favourite dolls on opposite ends of the room and they had to figure out a way to get both dolls on there own.

4. Family “Just before our fourteenth birthday, Uncle Stash took a day off his job as butcher at Vanderhagen’s Meat so he and Aunt Lovey could drive us to Toronto for a doctor’s appointment for Ruby’s Gastrointestinal problems- and to learn a little more about our birth mother.” (34)

5. Family: Family is something very important in the book ‘The Girls’ by Lori Lansens, with Rose and Ruby being very sick they need the support and help from there families. Whether its driving them to far away doctors appointments or the mental support after finding out that they will not live for long. Rose and Ruby are also considered to be weird and don’t have very many friends at school or growing up throughout there life, so family is something that was always there for them and that they could rely on to be there. Without there family Rose and Ruby Darlen may have lost hope and not have lived as long as they did.

6. Strength “I tell myself that Ruby’s eyes were squeezed shut and that she didn’t watch Aunt Lovey slam against the windsheild and snap at the neck, then clang against the steering wheel like a ringer on a bell.”

7. Strength: The girls grew up not knowing who there mother was, they had never met her or talked to her or even seen a picture of her. There mother figure had always been Aunt lovey, she raised them, took care of them, and taught the everything. She tried her very hardest to give them the best life they could have, and when she died Ruby and Rose lost there mother figure. Someone who had been there since day one. It would've been bad enough just losing her but they also had to witness her death. Very soon after they lost there father figure, Uncle stash and were left all alone. They showed great strength from overcoming both those deaths and continuing with there life.

8. Religion “On the subject of dying unbaptized, Aunt Lovey had always said, ‘If God stops two good girls like you from entering heaven just because some drunk old priest wouldn’t sprinkle water on your head, well then, God is just not who I thought he was. I most certainly wouldn’t want to spend eternity in a place a whole lot of perfectly nice people were turned away from. You girls shouldn’t either.’”

9. Religion: Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash both grew up to be Catholics and they wanted the same for Ruby and Rose. However when trying to get baptized in there small town the priest considered them an evil monster and refused to baptize them. Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash still raised them as Catholics just without being baptized, they taught the girls all about god and being a catholic. Rose and Ruby grew up with that religion even though they weren't baptized.

10. Love “Before she closed her eyes tonight, Rose said she regretted that she has not done something heroic in her life. Well, it's not like she can suddenly climb a tree and save a cat, or go to medical school and begin some important cancer research. But Rose has been my sister. I think that's heroic.”

11. Love: Rose and Ruby Darlen aren't capable of doing many things normal people can because they are conjoined, such as doing something heroic. But something they both can feel is a love that most other people cant feel. There are very few people who are conjoined twins and ruby and rose get the chance to be closer than any other sister or twins.

12. Acceptance “The class of fourth graders (who tolerated Ruby and me because we were locals, and because they’d been threatened to death by their parents) were starving for a target, and they found it in the cross-eyed immigrant.”

13. Acceptance: Rose and Ruby Darlen would have looked quite strange to all other kids in the small town they lived in. With them being conjoined at the head they would normally be called, freak, and crazy, and evil, or even monster. However in the small town of Leaford most people had grown to accept them. They had grown up with them and gotten to know them, also they weren't allowed to say anything mean because of there parents, yet either way they are accepted.