Crossing by Gary Paulsen

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A long, long time ago, God decided to punish the wicked people, but before he did that, he instructed Noah to build an ark and fill it with two of every animal he can find along with his family. Animals and humans. The book I would like to use throughout this essay is “ Crossing ,” by Gary Paulsen. This book took place in Juarez, Mexico, where a bridge could mean so much. Each character in this book was being compared to an animal, to make us more understand about each of them. Each of them are also different. From the shape of their eyes, the way they react to something, and those are what made each of them different and special. Paulson compares animals and humans by their simliar characteristics and their behaviors. Palson had used a lot of animal comparisons with characters throughout this book, but I would only use three of them in this essay. The first comparison happened on page seventy-eight of Crossing. An example of animal comparison between the main character Manny, was quoted, “..oh yes, it was the monkey. There had been a monkey on a chain tied to a wire between two trees.” I believe there are two reasons that Gary Paulsen compared monkey, this particular animal, to Many, this particular character. The first reason is quite obvious, between Manny and the monkey. Monkeys are believed to be lower IQ humans, another form of human who shared lots of similarities and resemblances in different areas with humans. The second reason is their situation, both without freedom. What is freedom? Nobody can define the word “ freedom.” But the basic definition of freedom is when you’re free from fear, free from slavery, and injury. Do the monkey and Manny have them? No, they don’t have anything above. Manny, is al... ... middle of paper ... ...ven its unique personality, identity, and destiny. They are like us, but they live in books. To me, we can know read their stories and use what we read to connect them to what we already knew. Manny, the main character in “Crossing”, was being compared to a monkey whose tied up with chains, which resembled the lost of freedom for both of them. Manny compared the group of people who wants to catch him and sell them to hawks to emphasize that he can not fight back the hawks. it’s either run or caught, he doesn’t have a choice. He also compared the way the people from example three to street dogs, because they way they fought. Throughout our processing throughout the history, we had maintained a very close relationship with animals. Which is what Gary Paulsen, the author of “ Crossing,” had tried to do in the “ Crossing,” to compare the character he made to animals.

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