My Personal Hero Story

The eight steps of my hero’s journey:

The Call: Paul asking James and his friends on the street if they want to meet and get to know each other better.

The Threshold: When James leaves the house against his parents will and enters the new unknown territory of Paul, which he has never seen before.

The Challenges: First of all, he has to stand up against his friends, and agree to meet Paul. Then he has to argue with his parents, and do something against their will. He goes through his window just to meet Paul.

The Abyss: When he arrives in town he has to find the café he has never seen before. Although it takes him a long time to find it, he doesn’t give up, and wants to keep his promise.

The Transformation: James overcame his fear to meet with Paul and enter the cafe, and realizes he is a really nice person.

The Revelation: He realizes that he was right in saying that the people who say that people who don’t wear expensive clothe and drive expensive cars are not as good as those who do is wrong; but he learned that not everyone that has money, has to show it. This is a completely new situation with which he is confronted. He has never heard of that before, and this really makes him think.

The Atonement: He meets with other kinds of people which he hasn't done before; he makes new great friends, which are really nice, and don’t only use and wear expensive things.

The Return: When he returns, his parents and friends at first are very confused; as he explains what people can be like, everyone is really convinced of him, and Paul. His idea has been very well accepted, and to honor him, his parents and friends don’t wear brand clothes for a whole week.

Protagonist description:

James wasn’t known to be brave; he was a rather shy seventeen year old, and two years younger than all of his friends. He played in the first Swiss soccer league, and thought he was the best of all, but never really said it. He earned very good money, and showed it very obviously by only wearing brand clothe with huge logos, and driving big cars. His five best friends were just like him, all convinced they were the best, and the coolest. They were satisfied stating that the "cool" people have to wear brand clothe, and drive big cars. They didn’t even talk to people that didn’t look cool in their opinion, they laughed at him. They gave them the feeling of being bad people because they didn’t have as much money. James was always with them and laughed, but never said a lot, he was too shy to stand out and deep inside thought different than his friends. He hated how they acted, but was scared to show and say so. He drove a big car and brand clothe because he wanted to have friends and be just like all others, not because he felt better if he had any of this. He was confronted with a situation he didn’t want to, and didn’t know how to get out of it. He was scared that his friends wouldn’t want to be with him anymore if he changed his clothing style, and if they left him, he would have had nobody left. He thought that he would be all by himself. He waited for the right moment to say what he thought for years and years, but it had never come.

What about the world you live in makes you uncomfortable?

There are a lot of things I like and don’t like about my surrounding world, but there is one thing I can’t stand. I hate it when people judge others because of what they are wearing, where they come from, what the parents do for a living, or how they look. I think that this is just ridicules; people can’t change anything of these four things. These don’t show anything about the character a person has, or how he/she really is like. Just because someone is wearing a t-shirt of a brand, or his/her parents are employed in a higher rank then one of their friends, they aren’t better, or more special. There are too many people that judge others by the first view or what they have heard from others. This really has to stop.

The Pea-Pod Man creating the World

Characters: Raven (creator, bird or man)
Man (created-new to Earth)

Plot: Raven (bird or man) is the creator of everything and can create what ever he wants (out of clay), so he creates food such as raspberries and animals such as humans, fish's, birds, or bears. He created a man out of clay. But soon the man gets too happy with his life, so Raven creates a bear to fear the man because he doesn't want him to be completely happy. At the end of the story, Raven creates a Wife for the Man and they have children, and this is how we were created.

Power Paragraphs

Mark Haddon writes with a lot of evocative description. Evocative description means to describe something with imagery, meaning that the reader can visualize what the author was writing as an image; he/she can imagine what the scene looks like. As seen on pg 131, we can perfectly image what is going on: "I counted the letters. There were 43 of them. They were all addressed to me in the same handwriting. I took one out and opened it. Inside was this letter….." The reader can perfectly image what it looks like, the 15-year old boy sitting there, with the big bunch of letters, looking surprised, and opening the first one he can grab. This is a perfect example of an evocative description.

 

In addition, there is a lot of clarity involved in big portions of Haddons writing. For example, on pg. 141, “Mother had not had a heart attack. Mother had not died. Mother had been alive all the time. And Father had lied about this." This shows that he really tries to clarify exactly what’s going on, how he feels, and what he thinks happened. This gives the reader the chance to completely understand why, what happened, and how. Haddon completely understands how to write with clarity.