I like how the characters were taken completely out of their element here and placed in this situation. Pregnancy is pretty serious especially for a teenager, not to mention one who has just gone off to college. I found it interesting that the two main characters, China and Jeremy, were described as these two people who hated "over-breeders" and how getting pregnant is the worst thing that could ever happen to someone there age. For China to actually end up pregnant was a bit of a shock because as the reader you think she'd be that last person on earth to let that happen to her.
I found it interesting how Boyle decided to take the story in the direction he chose by allowing the characters to throw the baby in the dumpster, almost as some sort of love test towards Jeremy. I have to think that he must have really loved China in order to get rid of the baby for her and not at least think of something else they could do. Here we see true love being torn apart because everything else after that goes down hill for the two of them. I liked how Boyle captured China's thought of real love also through the initial scene with her thoughts of what sex is supposed to be, when in reality they shouldn't be having it at all and that's not the definition of real love. This story also captures the whole "it only takes one time" saying and how one mistake can change your life. Its the stereotypical story of the teen pregnancy and it works. But rather than the usual pregnancy pushing the two father apart, its the smaller conflicts within the big picture that cause China and Jeremy to become more distant. I guess you could say its a conventional story presented in the non-conventional way and it works.
It is conventional in that you see teenagers suffering consequences for poor decisions, but you also see that the intent was to describe how this happened and to focus on the people, not a one dimensional moral message about abstinence. And that's what makes this art.
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