"In a page discuss why Alice's diary can be considered one of the novels main characters. Go ask Alice by anonymous."

When she begins keeping a journal the diarist, the daughter of a university professor, is an ordinary, insecure, middle-class suburban teenager preoccupied with boys, diets, and popularity. Her fortunes take a sharp turn for the worse when her family moves to a new town and she finds herself less popular and more isolated than ever before. Unhappy in the new town, she is overjoyed to be allowed to return to the old town to spend the summer with her grandparents. During this stay she is invited to a party by an old acquaintance; there she unwittingly ingests LSD that had been added to random bottles of Coca-Cola and distributed to the party guests as a game. The other guests had mistakenly assumed she was aware of what the "game" entailed. After this first unwitting, but pleasurable experience, she seeks drugs deliberately, and rapidly proceeds to marijuana,and amphetamines. She describes her drug experiences intricately; the more extreme the supposed diarist's drug experience, the more sophisticated and descriptive her writing becomes.

A pregnancy scare and the return to her new town encourage her to turn away from drugs; however she soon willingly falls in with the drug crowd where finally she finds acceptance. She starts dating a drug dealer and sells drugs to grade-schoolers for him. After realizing he was using her, she turns him in to the police and runs away from home with her new friend Chris, moving to San Francisco. She opens a boutique with Chris, however she misses her family. After being given heroin and then being raped by Chris' boss, Shelia, and her boyfriend, she and Chris return home.

She is welcomed back warmly by her family, but finds herself ostracized by the community and has difficulty keeping her resolve to avoid drugs. She soon weakens and, while high, runs away again. She spends time living on the streets, a period during which her diary is not dated and entries were purportedly recorded on scraps of paper or paper napkins. She finds herself having sexual relations with strangers and loses track of everything, but her fear for her family finally gives her enough courage to ask a priest to help her return home.

When she returns home she vows to stay completely off drugs, and succeeds, even without the support of Chris who has now moved away. However, she is again ostracized by her former friends, who continue to label her a police informant, and is ignored by the "square" kids. She starts a new romance with a student, Joel, at her father's university. While babysitting, she is drugged without her knowledge. She has a violent, bad trip, during which a neighbor locks her in the closet, where she badly injures herself trying to claw her way out, and she is committed to a psychiatric hospital. After being released, she returns home, finally happy and over her drug addiction. She gets her life back on track and finally makes the decision to stop keeping a diary.

An editorial note informs readers that three weeks after the last entry, the diarist died of an overdose. Although it is unclear whether the girl's overdose was accidental or premeditated, or what drug or drugs specifically prompted her death, the key issue is that this girl -- whose life the reader has followed in intimate detail -- was just one of the thousands who died because of drugs that year.

In this book author Beatrice Sparks crafted a story which uses the literary device of having an isolated drug addicted teen express her deepest thoughts via her diary. The diary takes on the role of the non-judging therapist a blank slate for her to express her feelings and chronicle her journey to death.

When she begins keeping a journal the diarist, the daughter of a university professor, is an ordinary, insecure, middle-class suburban teenager preoccupied with boys, diets, and popularity. Her fortunes take a sharp turn for the worse when her family moves to a new town and she finds herself less popular and more isolated than ever before. Unhappy in the new town, she is overjoyed to be allowed to return to the old town to spend the summer with her grandparents. During this stay she is invited to a party by an old acquaintance; there she unwittingly ingests LSD that had been added to random bottles of Coca-Cola and distributed to the party guests as a game. The other guests had mistakenly assumed she was aware of what the "game" entailed. After this first unwitting, but pleasurable experience, she seeks drugs deliberately, and rapidly proceeds to marijuana,and amphetamines. She describes her drug experiences intricately; the more extreme the supposed diarist's drug experience, the more sophisticated and descriptive her writing becomes.

A pregnancy scare and the return to her new town encourage her to turn away from drugs; however she soon willingly falls in with the drug crowd where finally she finds acceptance. She starts dating a drug dealer and sells drugs to grade-schoolers for him. After realizing he was using her, she turns him in to the police and runs away from home with her new friend Chris, moving to San Francisco. She opens a boutique with Chris, however she misses her family. After being given heroin and then being raped by Chris' boss, Shelia, and her boyfriend, she and Chris return home.

She is welcomed back warmly by her family, but finds herself ostracized by the community and has difficulty keeping her resolve to avoid drugs. She soon weakens and, while high, runs away again. She spends time living on the streets, a period during which her diary is not dated and entries were purportedly recorded on scraps of paper or paper napkins. She finds herself having sexual relations with strangers and loses track of everything, but her fear for her family finally gives her enough courage to ask a priest to help her return home.

When she returns home she vows to stay completely off drugs, and succeeds, even without the support of Chris who has now moved away. However, she is again ostracized by her former friends, who continue to label her a police informant, and is ignored by the "square" kids. She starts a new romance with a student, Joel, at her father's university. While babysitting, she is drugged without her knowledge. She has a violent, bad trip, during which a neighbor locks her in the closet, where she badly injures herself trying to claw her way out, and she is committed to a psychiatric hospital. After being released, she returns home, finally happy and over her drug addiction. She gets her life back on track and finally makes the decision to stop keeping a diary.

An editorial note informs readers that three weeks after the last entry, the diarist died of an overdose. Although it is unclear whether the girl's overdose was accidental or premeditated, or what drug or drugs specifically prompted her death, the key issue is that this girl -- whose life the reader has followed in intimate detail -- was just one of the thousands who died because of drugs that year.