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Deirdre Eliade (Dee)


   
  In The Forbidden Game trilogy Jenny Thornton has two best friends.  One of them is Audrey Myers.  The other is Deirdre Eliade who’s nickname is Dee.  Dee is a headstrong, impulsive type who enjoys martial arts.  She’s a health nut who calls pork “death on wheels.”  She’s known Jenny for years and because of this isn’t so friendly to Jenny’s newest best friend Audrey.

     Dee is the reckless one.  She’s the one who says she’s going to “kick the Shadow Dude’s ass.”  She’s also the only one who truly attempts this, though it doesn’t get her much of anywhere and this is where we start to get beyond the surface image that Dee likes to project.  In The Hunter Dee must face her biggest nightmare, an alien abduction.  Someone’s worst nightmare can tell you a lot about them and in Dee’s case this is true.  Dee’s worst nightmare comes true when she’s lying helpless on a table in an alien spaceship unable to move, unable to fight this physically and unsure how to address problems in any other way.  When Jenny and her manage to get away from the aliens, you can tell that Dee has changed, that she’s come to a new realization, that maybe it is possible for her to fight things in ways that aren’t plainly physical.  It’s not the end of Dee’s problems though.  Although there’s not much that seems to happen to Dee specifically in The Chase, in The Kill Dee’s insecurities must be faced by her once again.  Sitting with her friends in the Tunnel of Love and Despair, Dee must listen to Julian address her worst fears.  He tells her that she’s stupid and that she would never make it in college, that there’s nothing underneath her surface.  We have found out before this that Dee’s mother was upset that she didn’t want to go to college and her grandmother was upset that she didn’t want to do something arty.  Now we realize that the reason for Dee not wanting to do these things is that she’s afraid.  She’s afraid that she’s not smart enough to be good at them.  She’s afraid that she’s disappointed her mother and so she clings to the one thing she knows she’s good at which is the physical stuff, acting as if it’s all she cares about.  It turns out to actually be a good thing that Julian makes his attempt to throw her into despair because, by bringing her fears out into the open he gets her to start to face them.  By the time the trilogy ends Dee has realized that she’s smarter than she thought (she’s even considering going to college) and that some time’s she needs to think about things before she does them, not to be so impulsive.  Deirdre Eliade becomes a much more well rounded person.

Quote From:
The Forbidden Game trilogy by L.J. Smith

 
Reflections on LJ Smith
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Since 05/30/02
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