The Boy Who Harness The Wind Analysis

In this essay about the book ‘The boy who harnessed the wind’ written by Bryan Mealer & William Kamkwamba I will firstly describe William Kamkwamba and his early life in Malawi. Next discuss the challenges he faced and how he was able to build a windmill.

William Kamkwamba is a schoolboy in Malawi. He is the son of farmers. In the book William describes his life growing up in Malawi. We learn that he believes deeply magic and all of the stories he has been told passed down for thousands of years. He fears witchcraft and a lot of the decisions he makes evolve around the witchcraft and magic that he fears. He doesn’t want to get on the dark side of the magic so will do whatever it takes to keep away from it. During the book William shares that

After he has to leave school because his family could no longer afford it he begins teaching himself at the local library because he is very motivated to learn. He begins to get curious in the wind and dreams of harnessing its power in some ways to benefit him and his family. In the library he comes across the book ‘Using Energy’ he says that ‘Using Energy – this book has changed my life’. He then begins to gather parts to build the windmill. He starts to use parts he has and can find in the junkyard. He also made stuff that he couldn’t find, in the book William tells us ‘I didn’t have a drill so I had to make my own’ he also used ‘a flathead screwdriver we’d hammered out of a bicycle spoke’. He also sometimes will take jobs to earn money to buy what he can’t find. Throughout this period of time William says ‘I’d become very interested in how things worked’. William is a natural self-taught engineer and builds a working windmill despite being called a ‘mad man’ by many people for trying. In the book he quotes ‘electric wind… I told you I wasn’t mad’ after this people begin to realize that they were wrong about William and what he was trying to achieve. And in the end his vision becomes reality, when people ask him how he managed such a thing he says ‘hard work and lots of