Flowers In The Attic

How can friendship impact a person’s life? In the novel, Flowers In The Attic by V.C. Andrews, the friendship between Catherine Dollanganger and Christopher Dollanganger changed both Cathy and Christopher as people, as well as impacting their younger siblings, Carrie and Cory Dollanganger’s lives. Their friendship made Catherine into a more mature person. It forced Christopher to be more caring and compassionate than he naturally was. And because of the impact it had on Catherine and Christopher, it also impacted Carrie and Cory’s lives as well, by saving their innocence and shielding them from the horrifying truth of the world they were living in. At the very beginning of it all, Catherine was only a little girl.

Catherine’s friendship with

Christopher shaped her into the strong woman she is today, but she wasn’t always like that. Near the beginning of the book, twelve-year-old Catherine learned that her mother was going to be having another child, and she freaked out and screamed at her father over it, thinking, “Babies - two or more! I was the baby! I didn’t want any little whining, crying, babies coming along to take my place!” (p. 9) and yelling at her father, “Go away!...I already hate your babies!” (p. 9). This is not much of a surprise, given that she’s only a child, but mere months later, when she begins growing closer to Christopher, she realizes how she must sacrifice sometimes, how not all her days can be her happiest. This happens when Christopher and Catherine are cradling their sleepy younger siblings and Christopher says to Catherine, “The Bible says there is a time for everything, a time to be born, a time to plant, a time to harvest, a time to die, and so on, and this is our time to sacrifice. Later on will come our time to live and enjoy.” (p. 160) Catherine listens closely as Christopher tells her this, and takes it largely as she feels “...grateful he was always so optimistic...” (p.160) and thinks to herself, “Chris is right. Our happy time would come (later)...” (p. 160). This behavior continues throughout the book as she is forced to take care of her younger siblings as if they were her own children, and console and comfort Christopher in his times of need, along with taking on other responsibilities with little to no complaining or bickering. She even admits it to herself on pages 304-305, when she has a breakdown and almost commits suicide, but realizes how much she is needed as she fervently tells herself, “Just how would Chris and the twins survive without me to take care of them? Who would mother the twins, and lavish them with the affection that was sometimes embarrassing for Chris to give as easily as I did? As for Chris - ...When he got that M.D. behind his name, that would be enough to satisfy him all his life through. But when he was a doctor, I knew it still wouldn’t be enough, never enough, if I wasn’t there, too.” Yes, Catherine and Christopher’s friendship impacted Catherine a lot, but it impacted Christopher, possibly, even more.
Christopher was forced to become compassionate and caring through his friendship with Catherine. At the beginning of the novel, Christopher is a simple crass teenager who jokingly tells Catherine, “Hey...you don’t look half-bad.” (p. 15) when she dresses up for their father’s birthday party. Catherine tells him how rude he’s being, saying, “Half-bad? Is that the best you can manage?” (p. 15) but Christopher doesn’t listen and simply tells her to hurry up and come downstairs quickly. As he grows closer to Catherine over the course of the book, he begins to listen to her and change his words. On page 306, this compassions shows greatly when he comforts Catherine after she almost commits suicide. He tells her, “Cathy...what you said...don’t ever say ugly, hopeless things like that again...Not once have I ever wished myself dead!...Don’t you ever say such a thing again - or think about death! Sure I’ve got doubts and suspicions hidden away in me, but I smile and laugh, and make myself believe because I want to survive. If you died, by your own hand, you would take me down with you, and soon the twins would follow, for who would be their mother then?”, and soon after Catherine admits that Christopher had helped her, or in her words, “ He made me whole, he gave me what I lacked, a stability when I would run off wild and frantic…” (p. 306). This continues on on page 314 when Catherine gets angry at the ending of a book her and Christopher had been reading, and Christopher calms her down, saying, “Perhaps lovers aren’t supposed to look down at the ground. That kind of story is told in symbols - and earth represents reality, and reality represents frustrations, chance illnesses, death, murder, and all kinds of other tragedies, Lovers are meant to look up at the sky, for up there no beautiful illusions can be trampled upon...Oh, Cathy, sometimes, really, you are just too much.”. This behavior isn’t only ever shown with Catherine though, he also cares for his baby brother (p. 281), his baby sister (p.167), and stands up for his mother when Catherine questions her honesty (p. 122). Christopher and Catherine’s friendships impacted Catherine’s life greatly, and Christopher’s life even more, but it was truly their younger siblings who were saved by their companionship.
Carrie and Cory Dollanganger suffered many horrors through the early years of their life, but Christopher and Catherine took care of them, and because of that they were kept innocent and pure.

At the near beginning of the novel, Cory and Carrie are both five years old, and know almost nothing of the world but their family and play. This is illustrated on page 14 when Carrie and Cory play in mud after being cleaned and dressed for a birthday party, and complain to Catherine about having to take another bath. They tell her, “One bath a day is enough!...We’re already clean! Stop! We don’t like soap! We don’t like hair washing! Don’t you do that to us again, Cathy, or we’ll tell Momma!”. Throughout the book, Cory and Carrie suffer abusive acts from their grandmother, such as when they are threatened by their grandmother to be whipped if they disobey her (p. 92), are starved for two weeks to the point where they had to drink their sibling’s blood for sustenance (p. 251), and are poisoned with arsenic for months (p. 396-397). Catherine was always a mother for them, she cared for them when they were sick (p. 362-363) and told them stories to calm them down (p. 172-173), and Christopher was always a father for them, ushering them to eat healthy food they didn’t want (p. 167) and trying his best to give them what they wanted and what they needed (p. 281-282). Through their older siblings they were able to make it through the three years they had been abused and locked away in an attic like rats, and were kept from suffering trauma afterwards because of it. Near the end of the book, it is described how they played together, in a joyous way that it would seem no one who suffered what they did could, “...Cory was plucking a tune on banjo...as Carrie chanted simple lyrics he’d composed...And I sang to him that special, wistful song that belonged to Dorothy in the movie The Wizard Of Oz, - a movie that the twins adored every time they saw it…The look on Cory’s face as he

stared...touched me so deeply I had to turn away to keep from crying.” (p. 325). All four children, Christopher, Cory, Catherine, and Carrie, suffered much in the years they were locked up in the attic at their grandmother’s will, but their love for eachother was what kept them sane, and safe from the torture of their reality.
Overall, it was the friendship between Christopher and Catherine that impacted all four of their lives. It saved Carrie and Cory’s innocence. It made Christopher a more caring and compassionate person. And Catherine was able to become a mature and responsible woman. The dust collected on their eyelashes and they dried like flowers and weeds, but the love they shared was what changed them, and what changed their lives.