When my mom showed me this book at the bookstore, I was skeptical. It showed people falling through the sky and seemed very romantic, I wasn't sure I'd like reading it. In fact, I was worried that people would think worse of me for reading it, so I removed its cover and read it in secrecy. Little did I know that David Levithan's Every Day would become one of the most thought-provoking books I have read in my life. It's very well-written, the story is one of a surreal, extraordinary love that impressed me. In my reluctance to read it, I seemed to be straying from the book's message: that people shouldn't judge others by their appearance.
Every Day is the story of A, a mysterious yet honest character whose history is hard to determine. A's gender is unspecified, so it can be assumed that he is neither or both. A is only a conscience, changing daily from body to body. A is a new, unique individual every single day of its life. One day A will be a suicidal girl, the next a masculine football player. A tries to deal with these people's lives with respect, not doing anything out of the ordinary. A continues changing live until A meets Rhiannon. As can be imagined, A falls in love with her, but it's hard because she doesn't know that A is in the body of her horrible boyfriend. A chaotic and adventurous relationship ensues as A and Rhiannon try to continue loving each other when they are a different couple every day (she finds out about A eventually). Throughout the tale, the theme of outside judgement recurrently pops up as A realizes that no matter what it tries, A will never be itself and people can't help but prejudice others by their looks.
Judging things by their looks is a practice impossible for humans to evade. Even if we love someone, as is shown in Every Day, it is hard to accept imperfection in other things. If people find something ugly, it will be a struggle for them to like it later on. In Every Day, when A wakes up in the body of an obese man, Rhiannon finds it difficult to live with it. Although humans try and think that they can live above that level, it's an instinct to say "that's ugly" or "that's pretty" the first time they see it. What is most important is that we don't show it until we are sure that that object or person really is "bad" in its use or personality.
Even if we try the aforementioned strategy, it is impossible to know what being another person feels like. I was recently thinking about this, and I got dizzy as I realized the true enormity of the fact that every single person around us has billions of thoughts and feelings and their own personal lives, and that no matter how hard we try we will always be self-centered. I think A knows this about humans, as it hops from one life to the next. A seems like a perfect human until he meets Rhiannon: then it starts using other's lives as a means of being with her. A is willing to ruin completely innocent people in order to be with his lover, and that brings it down to a human level of selfishness. I think that if, for one day, everyone could be a different person, it would help us notice how completely different the world is to the people around us, and how wrong we are in thinking we are always right. We see everything our way, as there's no other way too see things~ and this makes us conceited and doubtful of others. However, being ourselves is also a big step to making the world go round. If we were all someone else, we would never get anything done, just like A. A will never know what it is to be a concrete being, a steady conscience with a set goal and a true life. That is what we should all strive to be.
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