Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes Analysis Essay

How do you choose between the love of your best friend, and their safety? In Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher, Eric Calhoune, a high school student, must decide how to help his best friend Sarah Byrnes, who was badly burned by her father when she was a toddler. When Sarah Byrnes stops talking to get away from her dad who was never caught for hurting her, Eric decides that he must find a way to keep Sarah’s dad permanently away from her. Eric makes hard decisions in order to help Sarah and himself such as telling his coach about her burns, telling Sarah’s father where Sarah went, and also keeping Sarah from running away to a special school in Colorado. When Sarah told Eric the truth about her burns, he went against her wishes by telling Mrs. Lemry, his swim coach, but it was still a good decision. Eric did this because he knew that he had to help Sarah but he did not know how to. “It boiled down to this: Somebody a whole lot smarter than me and Sarah Byrnes needs to help keep her man off her and to get a start on the life she got a glimpse of writing that letter. If I didn’t do something, Sarah Byrnes would either get dragged back by her dad, or she’d run away and be alone. The letter was clear: shaky as I was, I was her only friend. I’d rather have her hate my guts and be safe than love me and be alone” (131). This shows how deeply Eric cares about Sarah but also that he knows that he cannot help her by himself. He knows she doesn’t have much time before something bad happens to her. “’I know one thing,’ I said finally. ‘Sarah Byrnes hates no knowing worse than anything. She has to okay anything we do. And the first thing I’ll have to do is make it okay hat I’ve told you everything’” (143). When Eric says this, it shows that even though he didn’t get Sarah’s permission to tell Mrs. Lemry, he still acknowledges that if there is any ways for him to help her, she has to agree and not feel like she has lost control of her life.