The Challenges Of Nieve In Everyone Leaves

Everyone Leaves is interesting story because of all the challenges the protagonist has to overcome to progress in her life. In the book the common theme that arises is that everyone must face challenges for the better or worse of the person. Nieve, the protagonist of the story,is faced with multiple challenges that forms or shapes her mind, and changes her personality as she progresses in her life. In Everyone Leaves, Wendy Guerra reveals the theme that everyone must face challenges for the better or worse of the person through Nieve, as she deals with the challenges of loss, love, and pain. In the book there is many examples that demonstrate the connection between the theme and Nieve.

Throughout the story, Nieve encounters many challenges that change her in different ways. A significant challenge shown

in the book, is Nieve’s losses. Many people seem to come and go throughout the story, for the better or worse of Nieve. Such example would be when Osvaldo left Nieve to go to Paris. In Everyone Leaves, Wendy Guerra writes, “I’ve changed so much. I’m just not the same. With Osvaldo gone from Cuba, I feel weird going to galleries alone but I also feel a certain freedom”(202). From the evidence, it can be interpreted that Nieve was somewhat metaphorically restrained when Osvaldo was still there. Now that he is gone, she has a sense of freedom, making her going through this challenge of loss a good thing. Though not all of her losses were good, such as the time Nieve had to say farewell to a good friend of hers named Alan. Wendy Guerra writes, “The only person who ever honestly asks me to be happy is leaving. He’s been showing me his wounds and I’ve been cursing them with my tears since we were kids”(197). This shows how Nieve is sadden by the way she expresses their past together. This demonstrates the challenge of loss to be a bad thing because of how she is sad by the loss of Alan. The challenges of loss has definitely changed Nieve’s outlook towards people because it must have her wondering who is going to leave her next.

Most challenges are not always titled as a challenge, more like a experience.

Such as Nieve faces the experience of love. She deals with the challenge of love really well as she meets her first love, Osvaldo. Wendy Guerra writes, “I can still remember Osvaldo’s smell: a blend of wet leather, oil paint turpentine, and English lavender. I could feel his hair is wet. He offered me his hand and I trembled” (175). This demonstrates Nieve’s love for Osvaldo by the highly detailed description of just his smell and also how she reacts towards Osvaldo offering his hand for her. The challenge of love was good for Nieve because it helped her grow her own character but sadly her love for Osvaldo dissipated until a new love is sparked when she meets Antonio. Wendy Guerra writes, “ Antonio shines without the diamonds,the light from his sleep awakens me. His beauty is enormous and swallows me whole” (230). This shows really well of how Nieve feels love towards Antonio, through the explicit way of how she expresses him. This challenge of love is really good for Nieve because it helps her mature. With the challenge of being a experience that people can from, it is a good

thing.

Even though most of the challenges Nieve encounters hurt her emotionally, she also encounters challenges that hurt her physically. The challenge of pain was a bad experience that Nieve had to deal with when she was living with her father. Wendy Guerra writes, “I know he’d beat me, I just knew it. But there’s nothing I can do. He hit me on the head, hard with his belt buckle-really hard” (41). This demonstrates the challenge of pain Nieve has to go through while living with her father. It was an experience that further proved why her dad was a bad person. With constant abuse she dealt with, she can no longer tolerate the challenge of dealing with her father’s abuse. Nieve devised a plan so that social services can take her away from her father. Wendy Guerra writes, “ I don’t care that my father’s calm now. I went to the gym and I hit myself over and over against the bars. I threw myself from the little water tower and scraped my knees” (72). This demonstrates how she has to self inflict pain on herself to just leave her father. The challenge of pain was quite a difficult for Nieve’s body to handle, though this bad experiences were bad she did learn to be a stronger person from this challenge giving her a learning moment of her life, to deal with obstacles that lie ahead. The challenge of pain is hard to deal because of toll it can take on your body but yet you can learn to be a stronger person from it.

In Everyone Leaves, Wendy Guerra reveals the theme that everyone must face challenges for the better or worse of the person, and expresses this through Nieve as she deals with the challenges of loss, love, and pain. This was proven with examples previously stated that mentions challenges that Nieve encountered that she learned from. People can argue that a challenges does not always change somebody. That it is something we go through and gain nothing from it. There is clear evidence that is mentioned before that show these challenges and is then explained that no matter how small a experience may be, people can always learn from it. Wendy Guerra reveals the theme by demonstrating these challenges that Nieve faced and how she learned from it. The world is like a book, and every page we flip, there is always something new to learn.