Me Before You is a romantically twisted book turned movie. As with most books turned into movies, this one leaves out a lot, and the movie version just isn’t that great. But we’re not talking about movies here. We’re talking about the elephant in the room — the plot, that’s not a twist, but is actually a problem — assisted suicide.
The Rundown
The girl in the book/movie, Lou Clark, is your typical 26-year-old girl. She bounces from job to job, has a crazy family, and is just trying to figure herself out. In her search to find out who she is, she lands a job with a wealthy family, to be paid to be a companion to quadriplegic.
As unusual of a job as that it is, it gets weirder when she falls in love with him. So now she’s getting paid to be around someone she loves. Um, hello, sign me up.
Well, maybe not.
Lou finds out that Will (the quadriplegic) has an end date. He went from being an adventurous, world-traveling ladies man (before his accident), to being cynical, moody man stuck in a wheelchair. But Lou and Will are good for each other. He wants to show her that there’s more to life than being stuck in their quaint hometown. While she wants to show him that even though he’s in a wheelchair and can’t use his limbs, life is still worth living.
The Problem
So this is supposed to be about enjoying life, right? Wrong. Lou finds out that Will wants to participate in assisted suicide. He’s unhappy with the way his life turned out and made the decision to have his family take him to Dignitas in Switzerland (a place that you pay to be killed).
Other than him basically being a hypocrite in what he’s trying to teach Lou, shit hits the fan when he falls in love with her, and she with him. And he STILL wants to go to Dignitas. So love isn’t saving him.
This “love story” is the most heart-wrenching, hopeless nightmare that could ever be told. You want so badly for him to change his mind and stay alive for her. But on the other hand, he makes it clear how unhappy he is being a quadriplegic. So who do we side with? Horrible, right?
The Result
The moment Lou finds out about him wanting to go to Dignitas, she makes it her mission to change his mind. She wrote in online forums for quadriplegics to get ideas about what he can actually do, and made a bucket list of places to go.
After all of her hard work and planning, they crossed a few things off the bucket list — such as going to an island off the coast of Africa and scuba diving. She was convinced that he had changed his mind, especially by the way he acted toward her. But no, he didn’t. He was just getting her (and our) hopes up.
He went to Switzerland and after much internal debate, she went too. And in the end, she was the one to be there when the procedure took place. It was a twisted, slightly romantic gesture. But not really. I still can’t wrap my head around it. So I did some research on this controversial and complicated matter.
The Takeaway
Will’s condition as a quadriplegic was only going to get worse. Over time, he would become more crippled and more uncomfortable (according to the fictional writings of Jo Jo Moyes). Although I understand that he is suffering, I don’t support him hurting his loved ones by killing himself — especially at that stage of his life. He had only been a quadriplegic for two years and his family was pouring so much money into resources to make him more comfortable.
His life as a quadriplegic was different. I get it. But he had a loving family, an amazing home, and a girl who loved him. In the book/movie, Lou was willing to go above and beyond for him and even I learned that there are quite a lot of activities that he could have participated in as a quadriplegic. His character was just too stubborn to try any of them, which really bugged me.
Assisted suicide is a choice, and in this fictional case it was kind of a f*cked up story that you want to understand and end up having mixed feelings about. My takeaway from it was that love can’t save you. But I don’t believe that for a second. I also don’t believe in hurting people in your life who love and care about you. Will had a life to live with people who loved him. Taking that away from the world is totally wrong. I know it’s a fictional story, but these things do happen and I’m glad Jo Jo Moyes touched on that.