RanXin’s Comments (group member since Nov 08, 2016)

RanXin’s comments from the 833 Reading Responses group.

Question: How has the character’s background impacted him/her?
In the realistic fiction novel, Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen, the protagonist Sydney’s background impacts her by causing her to be more courageous, no longer standing back and becoming the wallflower of the family, but someone who’s ready to set out and prove her worth to the world. Sydney Stanford always felt invisible to the world and was used to her older brother, Peyton, being the focus of the family’s attention. He was handsome, charming, and smart. But as he started high school, he began to make bad decisions such as drinking, shoplifting, and breaking into other’s property. Finally, after crippling a boy while drunk driving, he was put in prison, but yet he was still the apple to their parent’s eyes. Now Sydney’s alone and meets the warm, chaotic circle of the Chatham family, and finally feels like she’s being seen for the first time. Because of their friendliness and love, she builds up the courage to stand out. Sydney stated, “I’ve always been the other, the one not Peyton; I’d come to accept it. But finally, I’d met people who saw me differently. Now that I’d been real and first to someone, I never wanted to be invisible again,”(280-281). This moment showed how Sydney’s background impacted her because it showed all the troubles and problems she had to go through all because of her brother and sometimes her parents, as well. She always thought that it was okay to be second to her brother because she admired him too, but when he crippled a boy, everything changed for her. She transferred school and met the Chatham family. Drawn to their warm and friendly group, they showed her that she should be her own person instead of standing in her brother’s shadows. As a result of all their support, she finally realized that she never wanted to be invisible and pushed around ever again.

Question: What is a moment that reveals something important about your protagonist?
In the memoir The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, an important moment that reveals that the protagonist is a mature and independent girl is when her and her siblings started earning their own money and fending for themselves. The Walls family had always moved around from state to state to avoid bill collectors and called these trips “a new adventure.” Their father, Rex, has a drinking/smoking problem and becomes dishonest and destructive when he gets drunk. But when he was sober, he told them stories and taught physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. Their mother, Mary, abandons her responsibility as a mother and hates the family life. She wants to be a free-spirit without her children’s complaints about her behavior. As the Walls children grew older, they protected one another and worked hard to find a life outside of Welch, without their parents constantly dragging them down. Jeannette stated, “Eventually, even Mom acknowledged that I’d done all right. ‘No one expected you to amount to much,’ she told me. ‘Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard”(270). This moment shows that Jeannette is independent and mature because… Unlike her parents, she struggled through discrimination based on her poverty and intelligence and cared about what other people thought about her. She hated her life in Welch and worked hard just like her siblings. She wanted to find a new life in New York City, where they won’t have to deal with leaky roofs, toilet that doesn’t flush, hunger, and poverty. And finally in spite of what all her teachers say, she was able to leave the gloomy, poor Welch behind and live the life she wanted independently, without her parent’s interference.

Question: What is an important choice or action your character made?
In R.J. Palacio’s realistic fiction novel Wonder, an important choice that the protagonist, August Pullman, made was to attend middle school. August was born with a rare medical face disorder called “mandibulofacial dysostosis.” This caused him to be home-schooled and babied by his family since he has many surgeries. But now, August is ready to enter fifth grade at Beecher Prep and prove to his classmates that even though he has an extraordinary face, he’s just an ordinary kid. On page 306, it stated, “To me, though, I'm just me. An ordinary kid. But hey, if they want to give me a medal for being me, that's okay. I'll take it. I didn't destroy a Death Star or anything like that, but I did just get through the fifth grade. And that's not easy, even if you're not me.” This shows that going to middle school was an important choice that August made because it shows all the troubles he been through. He wanted to be normal but because of his deformed face, he stuck out and got bullied by his peers. Although he suffered during the the school year, he also grew up because of it, and that’s what made the choice significant.