The Running Dream

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011

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Part 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

Jessica, the first-person narrator of the novel, is in the hospital after a tragic accident where she loses the lower part of her right leg. In and out of morphine-induced sleep, she is crying and wishing that her injury didn’t happen, that it is all a bad dream. As an active teenager and athlete, this loss represents a different kind of permanency: “My hopes, my dreams, my life…it’s over” (1). Her defeated outlook on life is contrasted by Dr. Wells’ cheerful nature and positive attitude toward the injury.

Watching Dr. Wells unwrap the bandaged stump below her knee causes Jessica to cry. The doctor is pleased with the way in which the leg is healing, but none of this matters to Jessica, who states that “the pain in my legs is nothing compared to the one in my heart” (2). The doctor recognizes the mental anguish that Jessica is feeling, and he reminds her that she is lucky to be alive and that she lost her leg below her knee, making the prospect of adjusting to a prosthetic leg much better than if she had lost her leg above her knee.

Dr. Wells encourages Jessica to “focus on the positive” (3), but for Jessica, there is no positive,as she will never be able to run again.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

In this brief chapter, Jessica defines who she was before her accident: an athlete bit by the running bug at a very young age. Being a runner isn’t just an action to Jessica, it’s also “who I am” (5). She recalls the first race she ran in third grade, a race that took place on a soccer field. It was there and then that she fell in love with running.

That race ignited a passion in her that connected her to the very core of who she was as a person. To Jessica, running “aired out my soul” (6) and “made me feel alive” (6). But now that she has lost her leg, she knows that her days as a runner are over, and that reality is a burden that she cannot bear.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

Hank, the prosthetist, visits Jessica in her hospital room, in order to measure her stump for a preparatory prosthesis. The process is painful because the injured area is still swollen, but the shrinker sock that Hank puts around the stump is designed to reduce swelling and increase recovery. Jessica’s mother asks how long the construction of the prosthesis takes and is alarmed when Hank says six months. However, he notes that Jessica is a young, healthy patient and may be a candidate sooner, if she heals quickly.

Jessica tunes out the conversation between her mother and Hank. As far as she is concerned, it hardly matters how long it will take for her fake leg. At this point, she “can’t see how [she’ll] ever even adjust” (8).

Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Teenager Jessica, the narrator and protagonist of the novel, has experienced a traumatic and profound loss. In a terrible accident, she loses her right leg below her knee. Jessica is a runner, and running is a critical component of her self-identity. Without the ability to run anymore, she is depressed and at a loss.

Jessica’s attitude in these first three chapters, while understandable, allows the reader to see an immediate obstacle to the healing process for this character. Incapable of envisioning a future for herself, Jessica spirals into further depression and shuts herself off from the conversations her parents have with Dr. Wells and the medical staff.

As a runner who can no longer run, Jessica is grappling with the reality of her situation and losing.