The Adoration of Jenna Fox

In “Hold On,” Jenna flashes back to a memory of her father desperately trying to save her life. Notably, he frames her survival in terms of himself and his desires, not hers. “‘I’m here,’” he tells her. “‘I won’t let you go’” (140). He orders her to hold on for him, underlining the inherent selfishness of his and Mother’s decision to keep Jenna alive at all costs. The cost that Jenna feels most strongly in this section is the loss of her sense of normalcy. Although Jenna previously felt abnormal because of her memory gaps and strange walk, she now knows that she is not just abnormal, but may not even be human. Her parents insist she attend school the next day, asking: “Doesn’t a normal life go hand in hand with a normal routine?” (142). However, as Jenna muses during class: “I am not normal” (142). In class, they discuss Walden and Ethan introduces Thoreau’s idea of an “‘invisible boundary” (143), which, once passed, will cause “the old laws [to] be expanded” (143). This clearly suggests the invisible boundary Father crossed when (re-)creating Jenna, and foreshadows a new world where Jenna will be able to live in peace. Jenna is so agitated by the events of the previous night that she can barely listen. Instead, she focuses on performing normalcy: “Do I look normal? What does a normal angry person look like? Should I sit back down? What am I doing? What am I?” (143). In the wake of her traumatic discovery, even showing emotion elicits an identity crisis. Jenna identifies her own individual boundary as having romantic feelings for Ethan, and her fear that engaging in a relationship would be unethical or taboo: “Everything in the universe says it’s not right” (144).

Dane continues to pursue Jenna. He reveals Ethan’s secret, something Jenna is already aware of. When Jenna says that maybe he “didn’t have a choice” (145), Dane replies, “They threw him in jail for a year. I guess they thought he had a choice” (145). Jenna still wonders about the nature of choice, but Dane’s comment reveals something new: that regardless of our motivations, choices and actions always have consequences.

Later on, Jenna discovers that her parents have planted subliminal messages in her brain, in addition to uploading huge chunks of the school curriculum. In this moment, Jenna struggles with what, if anything, is actually hers; “The marrow of Jenna Fox” (156), as she calls it. She remembers buying a red skirt with Kara and grieves deeply when she can’t find it among her possessions. “None of it is mine” (179), she says, referring not just to the material possessions in her room, but the information inside her body and brain, as well. When talking with Lily, Jenna acknowledges that Lily is also faced with an invisible boundary, a “line that she is dancing” (187), torn between wanting to embrace the new Jenna and feeling that she is not quite human. Crossing a boundary of her own, Jenna asks Lily if the old Jenna would have wanted this life. “What are you now?” (189), Lily replies, refusing to cross that boundary until Jenna has figured out what it means to be the “new” Jenna.