R.

Rubina , Class No:326

I. Sabina Baby, Class No:327

I HAVE LOST MY WAY

- Gayle Forman

Chapter – 1
Loss

Freya is a nineteen year old singer who is living in New York, and recording her debut

album. She’s on the verge of being famous when she suddenly losses her singing voice. Her life

goes from constantly working in the studio to endless doctor appointments. She was on her way

to becoming a star, and now she wonders if the world will still love her if she can’t sing anymore

she feels like she’s lost her way, like the person she was no longer exists.

The story begins with, Freya just typed “ I think I have lost my way” accidentally in her

phone and posted it. And she makes it fast to delete the post before anyone could see them. Freya

and her mother went to the hospital for doctor appointments. “ she’s lost her voice” ( pg no:3),

from this we can understand that she has lost her voice which is very important to her. Her voice

cracks when she tries to sing a high pitch.

People are exited about her album, so she wonders what will happen when the months go

by and there is no album. “I have lost my way” she once more thinks and understands how true

that is. She stumbled and fell off from the bridge onto a poor soul below. The soul fell

unconscious and he was taken to the hospital by another person who was standing nearby them.

Freya was trying to escape the spot as she was easy to be identified by the people. So she wanted

to find a reason to escape from there.

 Harun was raised in a loving close family, but one that has strict beliefs and high

expectations. He is a gay which he was unable to tell to his father. He fears what would happen if

his family came to know about it. He feels like coward and like he’s living a lie. He feels alone,

and is planning to runaway. He is the son of a traditional Pakistani-American family. He also

wanted to go to Pakistan to find himself a bride when he was dumped by James.

“l have lost my way”, Harun thinks as the prayer begins. He tries to focus but he can’t

focus on prayers. He can think of nothing but James, whom he lost. Harun texted James to

forgive him but there was no response. He didn’t even reply to him get the fuck out of my life

which was the last thing that James said to Harun. James never says things that he didn’t mean.

When Abu asks Harun, “ everything okay” ( pg no : 13) . He imagines telling Abu “I

have lost my way “, about his love for James. But it would only break his father’s hearts. In order

to avoid fuss, Harun replies with “ I’m fine “. When James was sick with Bronchitis and all

Harun wanted to do was get him somewhere warm and dry but he could not imagine where such

a place might be.

Harun left the house with his passport and five hundred dollar tucked in his pocket.

Harun’s phone rings in his hand and Harun jumps, hope rushing in like a rising tide. But it’s not

James. His Ammi tells him to keep him good health. His throat closes. He is a coward and a liar

and a bad son. He hangs up and his phone buzzes with a text, he pulls out with hope for James

reply but it was not James it is Amir, Harun’s cousin.

There is no answer from James, but that doesn’t stop him from seeing James everywhere.

Harun looks at the park everyone seemed to be him like James. There he is coming toward him
through the tunnel under the bridge. None of these people are James and for that Harun hates

everyone. He thinks if Allah is love, then why isn’t James the one walking through the tunnel

instead of some white boy? And finally he sees a girl who is not James fell over a boy who is not

James.

Nathaniel used to love his life, but now it’s hard to remember the person he used to be.

He feels like nobody sees him. He lost his father and felt all alone, lonely and depressed in

situations. Most day he feels invisible, like he hardly exists. He thinks that he is unlovable. He is

a white boy who lost everything and as a result he lost himself.

As people stream by him he says, “ I have lost my way”. No one responds and he isn’t

surprised as Nathaniel has been invisible for a while. Across the forty second Street is a park,

nice, unexpected even the park seems surprised to find itself here. It doesn’t help him figure out

where he’s supposed to be. Nathaniel says to a stream of pedestrians “I have lost my way “, and

to tell where the ‘A’ train is . But they kept moving without any response.

He moves to New York City, which was promised to be visited by them together, but

unfortunately he missed his father. He misses his father so much. Nathaniel pulls out his mobile

and gets the voicemail of his father’s recoding that he saved saying “ Tell me something good”

( pg no :21) and he replies it with “ Hey dad, I made it” . He hangs up the phone and opens the

guide book and thumbs through for the big map in the middle. He finds forty second Street and

draws a line across it until he finds a square block of green, amazed, relieved, ebullient, even that

there’s some representation, some proof, of where he is.

The path winds under a small arched bridge, a tunneled portal into the park. He examined

the bricks. They’re so old, the keystone binding the two seams is almost invisible. Under the
bridge the air is dark and musty. He holds his breath, like he used to when they would drive

through tunnels, his father encouraging him in the longer ones. “ I’m almost there” ( pg no:23)

he tells his father as he steps out of the tunnel. He feels a rush of air that turns out to be Freya

falling, but he doesn’t have time to see that because she has landed on top of him and everything

has gone black and he was unconscious.

Dad snapped Nathaniel’s fingers. Because Nathaniel lost both his eyes due to cancer

when he was little. He does not have eyes but he can see – literally see. So here it’s clear that

Nathaniel lost his eyes at first. One day his father and Nathaniel went to the forest walking.

Nathaniel gets hurt with the green tree branch, he didn’t feel any pain. It was only when he felt

the blood that trickled down his face. He knew something had happened.

Nathaniel tells his dad that he is hurt, he turns back and says “you’re fine”. His father

asked him to apply some leaves on it. Maybe it will have some antibacterial properties. The next

day his eyes were swollen, he went to the bathroom cleaned the wound as best as he could. His

father cleaning the dishes in the kitchen. Looking at the eyes of Nathaniel, he asked him to apply

ice on his swollen part of eyes. The next his eyes were filled with blood and the doctors said that

the eyeball have to be removed by surgery. One night when he was awake, his father was sitting

near him sobs because Nathaniel lost his eyes totally.

For Freya, as Sabrina told her, her father never returned from Ethiopia. He no longer

asked if she wanted to visit. He no longer asked if she sang. When Freya and Sabrina scrolling

through the facebook posts they came upon a picture of a woman holding a baby bundled in a

green blanket, with a caption in an Ethiopian language. When they translated, the translator spat

out the caption “Finally, we have a son”. Freya started to cry, her father totally forgot about her.

Sabrina asked Freya what she wanted to sing. Sabrina too video of Freya singing and posted it on
facebook tagging her father. Next day her father had untagged himself. This made her feel lost.

Many people shared her video, but Freya seemed to be unimpressed.

Harun found James of a dollar bill and lost him because of a fifty. James was in his

second year of school studying food management to become a chef. He just takes five

ingredients and turns it into a delicious dish. James was the only child who was raised by his

mother, one weekend she left him off with his father and never came back. He had recently

moved out of his father‘s house. James moved out from his father‘s place because his father

kicked him off when he told his father that he was a gay.

When a fateful accident draws these three strangers together, their secrets start to unravel

and they begin to understand that the way out of their own loss might just lie in helping the

others out of theirs.

Nathaniel felt and has no idea where to find his father. He thinks of the place where they

tried to travel together. Nathaniel’s father is mentally unstable. Nathaniel had a Déjà vu that his

father would lie someday on the kitchen floor and it so happened. Nathaniel doesn’t want to die

but he was so alone and thought he don’t want to be alone anymore. At that time he met Freya

and Harun, whom at final conclusion becomes best friend.

As the final conclusion of the novel, Freya sang her final bloodiest album by her raw

throat and Hayden came out of the booth applauding, that this is going to be viral. Hayden said

that her song his song is going to be famous. Harun finally gave a kiss to James and asks him to

stay with him for life. James refuses and asks Harun to return to his people. And finally he

understands that that Freya and Nathaniel are his people. Nathaniel thought to kill himself when
he lost his father, felt alone, depressed and wanted to die. At that time when he closed his eyes

and opened it he felt Freya and Harun came running towards him.

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind”

- Kiran Desai

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain”

- Kahlil Gibran