Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner Book Analysis

📌Category: Books
📌Words: 617
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 05 April 2022

Carver Briggs accidently murdered his three best friends (Mars, Eli, and Blake) by sending a seven-word text to Mars, who was driving and had to suffer many consequences. In the book, Goodbye Days, by Jeff Zentner, we watched Carver attempt to cope with his weakening mental state that was diminished by the circumstances of their deaths. After their deaths, Carver started to develop feelings for Eli’s girlfriend, Jesmyn, and felt like he was stealing something that was Eli’s. He also had to deal with being blamed for his friends’ deaths by many members of their families. Because of these factors and many more, Carver started to experience panic attacks whenever he would become overloaded with negative emotions.

Throughout the book Carver developed feelings for Eli’s girlfriend, Jesmyn, and he felt an overwhelming amount of guilt because of it. While hanging out with Jesmyn, he narrated, “A stab of guilt steals my breath, Eli isn’t here because of me, while I joke around with his girlfriend and talk about who we are and where we came from; while we partake of a tradition that should have been Eli’s. I beat down a wave of queasiness and dread” (Zentner 79). Carver felt very guilty being with Jesmyn because he felt like he was replacing Eli. He believed that everything that he did with Jesmyn was something that Eli was supposed to do with Jesmyn if Eli was still alive. Carver blames himself for killing Eli and taking his place.

Carver also had to endure the recurring torment of his friends’ family members blaming him for the deaths of their relatives. Eli’s twin sister, Adair, had the most vocal opinions about who was to blame for the accident. Carver narrates in school, “I go to my locker to grab my books for my next class. I open it and a fine plume of gray-black ash assaults my face and it’s sucked out by the door opening … The inside of my locker is covered in ash. The ingenuity to pull this off—someone must have blown it in through the door vents somehow. I see a small, cream-colored card lying on the floor of the locker. I pick it up and ash falls from it. It’s not some crappy notecard. It has an expensive heft to it. In a clean, elegant typeface, it says: MURDERER. I can sense Adair’s eyes, and the eyes of others, scorching my back” (Zentner 334). Adair was trying to embarrass Carver and convince everyone that he was responsible for the deaths of Eli, Mars, and Blake. This constant torment from Adair and others caused Carver to feel guiltier and lonelier.

The overwhelming emotions that Carver acquired because of the ramifications of the accident caused him to have multiple panic attacks. His first panic attack occurred after Blake’s funeral. During the panic attack Carver explained, “Gray, desolate dread descends on me—a cloud of ash blocking the sun. A complete absence of light or warmth. A tangible, mold-scented obscurity. A revelation: I will never again experience happiness” (Zentner 36). Carver becomes so distraught from what he has gone through that it has caused him to break down and have panic attacks. He believes that he will never be able to recover from the pain he has gained from these circumstances.

Shown in the book, Goodbye Days, by Jeff Zentner, Carver had to learn how to cope with the accident and how it caused his mental health to decline dramatically. Carver started to develop feelings for Jesmyn and that caused him to feel very guilty because he felt like he was stealing something that was rightfully Eli’s. Carver also had to deal with the feelings of guilt and embarrassment that Adair kept resurrecting in him, if they hadn’t already resurfaced without her help. On top of all of this, Carver started having panic attacks when his emotions would become too much to handle. Throughout the book, Carver struggled with his declining mental state because of this serious event in his life.

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