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Essay on touching spirit bear
Essay on touching spirit bear
Essay on touching spirit bear
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Animals: Canny, but feral; sagacious but fierce. For instance, in Mikaelsen’s Touching Spirit Bear, Cole Matthews is on a journey to find himself through the natural world on a forested, isolated island in Northwest Alaska. He perceives himself through the creatures. Like Cole, I too am searching through nature for my spirit animals. The chimpanzee, the jaguar and the dingo reflect my character and personality. Known for their relation to mankind and jocular acts, I chose the chimpanzee. Chimpanzees show entertaining radical behaviors. To demonstrate, sometimes they pull witty pranks on their caretaker and laugh a hysterical laugh afterwards. To add to that, they always have a grand old time and smile constantly. While being comical, they’re
"Everyone is influenced by their childhood. The things I write about and illustrate come from a vast range of inputs, from the earliest impressions of a little child, others from things I saw yesterday and still others from completely out of the blue, though no doubt they owe their arrival to some stimulus, albeit unconscious. I have a great love of wildlife, inherited from my parents, which show through in my subject matter, though always with a view to the humorous—not as a reflective device but as a reflection of my own fairly happy nature.
Hey, I didn’t see you there, how are you?I'm just wondering whether or not a big ol' grizzly bear is going to come charging at me at any point in my life, but seeing as grizzly bears are endangered that probably won't happen. In the past, there were thought to be around 50,000 grizzly bears in North America, nowadays they are growing sparse there are estimated to be only around 1800, now not even a 20th of the population in the past. Most of these grizzlies are located in Yellowstone National Park and Alaska, but they can also be found in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and Montana. Some are thought to be in Washington.
“Another source of greatness is difficulty. When any work seems to have required immense force and labour to effect it, the idea is grand” (Edmund Burke).We may not enjoy tremendous obstacles while we’re experiencing them, but when they’re over, we can definitely see the benefits. In Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen, the protagonist, Cole, has had to face many obstacles in his life, such as his abusive father, his neglectful mother and his anger. Many people can relate to Cole because they, too, have had many obstacles in their life. Overcoming obstacles makes Cole more empathetic and emotionally stable. Empathy is important because it is what allows humans to be human. Being mentally
After reading the story, Touching Spirit Bear, I learned that the main character, Cole Matthews, is a stubborn, ill-tempered, bully that enjoys watching others suffer and or go through pain. Infact, it is is stubborn, ill-tempered, bullying ways that lands him in his very own jail cell at the age of fifteen. “He was an innocent-looking, baby-faced fifteen-year-old from Minneapolis who had been in trouble with the law half his life.” (pg. 5 Touching Spirit Bear) This piece of information is very important because this leads up to his proper punishment, but if I am correct that quote states that he has been in trouble with the law since he was seven and a half. Finally at the age of fifteen they figured out how to get through
the idea of the wild and its importance and necessity of human interaction with the wild.
“Animals” is plural, differing from the singular “me.” This shows that not only is Percy comparing himself to a specific animal, but to all animals. Without a defining factor in animals, he could be making the collation of animals as animalistic behavior. What exactly separates “me” from the “animals?” Civilization? Humanity? Self-control? Rules? Percy places himself on the same level as the animals, disregarding the rules and regulations of humanity, many times throughout the essay, but especially when he is chasing someone who has intruded on his territory and aims to kill them with a pair of scissors. The narrator stops to think, “he must have thought that something wild pursued him. And maybe he was right” (cite). Percy leaves animals vague in his title so the reader can connect it with many possibilities, maybe even instilling fear of the unknown. “Animals” gives the reader the idea that he means animalistic behavior or raw instinct instead of an actual
Chimpanzees make tools and use them to procure foods and for social exhibitions; they have refined hunting tactics requiring collaboration, influence and rank; they are status cognizant, calculating and capable of trickery; they can learn to use symbols and understand facets of human language including some interpersonal composition, concepts of number and numerical sequence and they are proficient in spontaneous preparation for a future state or event.
In the article “A change of heart about animals” author Jeremy Rifkin uses rhetorical appeals such as ethos, logos, and pathos to persuade humanity in a desperate attempt to at the very least have empathy for “our fellow creatures” on account of the numerous research done in pursuit of animal rights. Rifkin explains here that animals are more like us than we imagined, that we are not the only creatures that experience complex emotions, and that we are not the only ones who deserve empathy.
...n rabbits, Robert’s sense of protection is perceived in the presence of birds and his wild edge is from the coyote. This is an indication that animals and human beings are essentially one being, struggling for survival within a harsh world.
Why is it so easy to use animal characteristics to portray what human nature craves? In writing, it is so much easier to say it is the animal in us because readers do not want to face the idea of calling it as it is, which is to say that it is the human in us. That human nature is only described as animalistic because no human want to say that they have animal characteristics but to give the animal human characteristics. When humans want their freedom, they write about how “free” an animal is. They write how animals can feel certain emotions. "In the 'Red Fox Fur Coat,' the author uses the main character's transformation into a fox to comment on how humans only feel free when they escape the confines of civilized society, while "Blood" uses
Important aspects of naturalism are the ideas that people are essentially animals responding to their basic urges without rational thought, and the insignificance of man to others and nature. In The Jungle, Sinclair portrays Jurgis as a man slowly changing into animal as well as a man whose actions are irrelevant to the rest of the corrupt capitalist world of Chicago in order to show the reader the naturalist ideas of the struggles between man and society.
Findley uses animal imagery in The Wars as a powerful method of revealing important aspects of personality in the protagonist and other characters. He weaves the characteristics of Robert and those of the animals he encounters in the story. This animal imagery and the character development of Robert is used to express the story's theme of humanity's similarity to animals.
Whether it be for a class field trip or a leisurely activity, most of us have been to the zoo, and most certainly have seen the apes and monkeys. It seems as though us humans are drawn to the primate section of the zoo, but why? Is it because they don 't exist ubiquitously throughout the world, or is it simply that we love to see some swing through the trees while others pound their chest? While both of these may play a role, one must realize that species tend to gravitate towards other species of similarity. In terms of humans, we interact with each other far more than any other species, and we do so for many reasons, which raises the questions of how and why? In order to answer these questions regarding human behavior, our closest relatives, nonhuman primates, are often put under the microscope. Due to the fact that humans are primates, studying other primates is perhaps the most effective way of gaining insight into our own subspecies on biological, social, and behavioral levels.
We may conclude that animal poems of Ted Hughes, which is Pike, The Jaguar, Skylark and The Crow’s First Lesson are not only about animal behavior driven by instinct, but they also portray us, human beings in modern context. However, he still gives mythical quality to animal because they follow their instinct while we leave our real nature behind us and follow the rule of civilization.
Some people may ask why animals are such an appealing choice for a story. When relating this to stories that were told us as children, it is apparent that children like animals, so it makes for a more approachable theme and idea for children to grasp onto. And it also makes for a story that they will enjoy. Also, since the purpose of storie...