Brief Summary Of Skellig's Story

At the time, Skellig is no more than a slightly spooky mystery to him. Yet, this does not stop him from asking if there is anything he can do to help his sister get better. This shows us how he is willing to overcome any reservation and social norm to do what he can to save his sister. He would rather ask a total stranger for help than stand idly by. He does not give up after this failed attempt; in chapter sixteen he asks Skellig again;
“‘Will you think about the baby?’ I said.
‘Eh?’
‘Will you think about her in the hospital? Will you think about her getting better?’”(Almond 54).
He is also known to ask Mina, and really anyone who will listen, to keep the baby in their thoughts (maybe a quote somewhere).
We see Michael skip

school for what seems like weeks in the first half of the novel. His father and he decide that he is better off at home helping his dad spruce up the new home for when his mother and the baby return home from the hospital. This is predominately in chapter fourteen that Michael escapes the emotional toll of school to aid his father in any way he can to help ease the burden of his sisters illness. He is always trying to help spruce everything up around the home and to visit her in the hospital as much as possible. David Almond says himself, “Michael is very mature, I think boys maybe often subject to a good bit of prejudice about what they’re supposed to be life. They are much more multidimensional than they’re often given credit for.” (Odean 50). It is abundantly clear that Michael is no ordinary boy.
In conjunction with his heroic asks within his family, Michael is especially brave in every moment this book portrays between Skellig and him. Every way that Skellig is described to readers make us assume that he is the antagonist of this story long before we get a chance to get to know him. Michaels first words on Skellig are “ He was lying there in the darkness behind the tea chests, in the dust and dirt. It was as if he’d been there forever. He was filthy and pale and dried out and I thought he was dead.” (Almond 1). Nothing about that description is what we would expect in any other children's novel to be describing one of the positive main characters of this novel. To any other young boy, the sight of this decaying and spooky figure would send them running to their parents in fear. Yet, Michael does not do this. Instead, he stands his ground and inquisitively stares at Skellig. Rather than scream, faint, or running away like we expect him to, Michael repetitively asks Skellig who he is. In the beginning portion of this novel Michael consecutively returns to and from the garage to see Skellig and try to get to know him better. He enlists the help of Mina and together the two provide for skellig in every way that they can.
It is clear that Michael’s valiant attempts to nurse Skellig are in ways his attempt of projecting the anxiety and helplessness he feels over his sister on to Skellig. Parsons and Bullen, make this clear to us when they write;
“The sense of powerlessness and uncertainty he feels in relation to his sister’s survival means that the active role he and Mina play in Skellig’s ultimate return to health is all the more significant. While Michael is helpless to intervene or assist with the procedures imposed by the doctors who are caring for his sister, he and Mina are actively able to help Skellig. They bring him food, ale, and medication, and move him to a safer place.” (131).
Despite what we might consider to be normal childhood behaviour, Michael goes above and beyond always. He is relentless in his attempts to rescue Skellig and to give him all that he can.
These two impeccable children over look the societal norms to provide Skellig with all that he needs to get better. Danielle Sahm points out in her essay about this novel, “Though they create a hypothesis about Skellig, the children never really know who he is or where he comes from” (120). Instead of being afraid of Skellig they move him from the ramshackled and dangerous garage into the safety of Mina’s grandfathers home. They continue to bring him food and anything else he needs to survive through the later half of the novel. Real heroism means standing in the face of adversity and not faltering. Michael even goes as far as too seek medical treatment for Skellig in chapter eighteen, and takes the suggestions Dr. MacNabola makes and brings them too Skellig (64-65). While it is evident that Michael displays all the unconventional necessities of a hero, we also see heroic tendencies disperse from Skellig as well. If Michael’s heroism was not already clear, the author himself also point out its obviousness in an article with Kathleen Odean, he writes “All of the children that I’ve written about so far are very brave people who challenge themselves to do something really dangerous in order to do something that’s very important —to rescue one another, and bring one another back together into the light, and to save one another.” (51).
As an audience, we never get a real definitive answer about who or what Skellig is.

He is a mystery to not only the two children of this story but to us the readers as well. Perhaps more obvious then Michael’s heroism, Skellig's first miracle he performs is the saving of baby Joy at the end of the novel. We learn that Skellig has visited Joy shortly after her miraculous heart surgery. She believes she has been dreaming of him, but Michael knows exactly what has happened, because it has happened to him. Skellig preforms his magical dance and the results are

wonderful;
“‘That’s right, like they were dancing, And then the strangest thing of all…’
She laughed at us, and shrugged.
‘And then the strangest thing of all was, there were wings on the baby’s back. Not solid wings. Transparent, ghostly, hardly visible. but there they were. Little feathery things. It looked so funny. The strange tall man and the little baby and the wings. And that was it.’” (Almond 150)
It is visible that what Skellig has done, is to transfer what ever magical powers he has onto this little baby to protect her. It is unclear what exactly he has done but Michael is convinced in what ever he has done, he has saved his baby sister. He did the same dance to Mina and Michael and we witnessed them change emotionally and spiritually in chapter thirty one.
Not only does Skellig save baby Joy, he ultimately saves Michael as well.

As we have already discussed, Michael is really suffering from all the jumbled changes in his life, both physically and psychologically. He isolates himself from his school friends into his home and time with his father, and the negative tolls can easily be seen. However, what seems like in the nick of time, his meeting of Skellig brings Michael out of his shell and into the guiding hands of Mina. It is through Skellig that Michael begins to come out of his shell and begin to see the positives in life once again. As Parsons and Bullen points out, these two become Michael’s grounding forces in life, they

note;
“She [Mina] and Skellig form a definitive narrative pair in the novel, and their doubled presence is powerfully representative of imminent death. Michael’s anxieties…shift between these two individuals, often blurring them in dreams and fantasies.” (131)
Michael first gets to know Mina because he is at a loss for what to do with Skellig, and from then on he has finally found someone he can confide in.
Before the can even share a true moment together Michael already believes that mina is “extraordinary” (Almond 77). Mina can read Michael like a book, we first see this in chapter thirteen, whose opening line is “You are unhappy”, being spoken by Mina to Michael simply by a look on his face. Mina is a constant source of support for Michael and never lets him stay down on himself for too long. She is his voice of optimism in times of doubt on his sister, the changing of his relationship with his school friends and the mystery of Skellig. Michael experiences his first relationship woes with Mina when they fight over his immature friends in chapters twenty nine and thirty. Together they have the adventure of a life time and stick together through it all, from thick to thin. All the while the remain “extraordinary” together (Almond 63).
Heroism in our day and age has become a diluted term. Its use, especially in children's literature, seems to be reserved for noble knights on horseback off to save a damsel or a seemingly ordinary man with super strength and the ability to fail. Our heroes in Skellig do not quite hit that mark on the charts, but they do remind us the simple heroic things that make life go on. Michael is a kind young boy, experience traumas all around him yet faces the world head on and continuously attempts to make the world a little brighter. He is selfless, adventurous and open-minded. On the other hand, Skellig himself begins this novel less than chatty with some serious attitude problems. Despite this, he goes on to be the guardian angel in both Michael and his sister Joy’s lives. Both character unique and different in their own right, but heroic none the less.