Eleanor and Park Essay

Eleanor and Park

 There are many ways that other people can affect and change our personality and our overall outlook on life-things they make us feel, or think. For Eleanor, in Eleanor and Park, there are a few circumstances that very negatively impact her outlook in the beginning of the book. Her strange sense of style and her crazy red hair make her feel far too different from all the “perfect” girls at her school, and from most girls she meets for that matter. This causes her huge lack of confidence about herself and her cautious, guarded personality around her peers, for fear of what they might think. Eleanor also faces feelings of bitterness and anger due to her terrible, broken family life and her abusive, unforgiving father, Richie. However, although these issues can’t completely disappear and probably never will, through her relationship with a boy whom she meets and soon falls in love with, Park, they seemingly lessen slightly as he helps her change and open up more as a person. The major lesson I took away from this book was that love change us greatly and can positively affect the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves.

            In the beginning, Eleanor lacks confidence and sees herself as unworthy in general-and even of Parks love. For instance, when she’s on the phone with him on page 109, it says, “She looked down at the turntable, at her own reflection in the tinted acrylic lid. She looked like a fat-faced ghost. She closed her eyes. ‘Why do you even like me?” This demonstrates Eleanor’s lack of confidence through the way she described how ugly she thought she looked, as well as her doubt about Park’s feelings for her. She doesn’t believe that Park could ever love her as much as she loves him, which isn’t true. Park loves and cares about Eleanor so much more than she knows. Another example of this shown when she meets Park’s mother. When she goes to Park’s house for the first time and meets her, she leaves just a few minutes after. She felt too uncomfortable around his “pretty perfect mom”. In fact she feels “She would never belong in Park’s living room. She never felt like she belonged anywhere, except for when she was lying on her bed, pretending to be somewhere else." This shows that at first even with Park, she doesn’t have the self-confidence and continues to feel that she doesn’t belong. Also, to make matters worse, over the past years Eleanor's life, it doesn’t seem like anybody has really been there for her or attempted to contradict her problem with low self-esteem, or any of the other issues she faces in her life, for that matter, which could only encourage them to remain or grow. She doesn’t have someone who she can trust and isn’t used to the kind of support and appreciation she receives from Park, which is probably why she’s at first so scared to accept it or believe that it’s really there.
              However, despite any doubts Eleanor has about their relationship at first, her strong feelings for Park are evident throughout the novel, as well as his for her. When they are on the bus and Park holds her hand for the first time, Park says "As soon as he touched her, he wondered how he'd gone long he'd gone this long without doing it." And for her-"Even in a million pieces, Eleanor could still feel Park holding her hand. Could still feel his thumb exploring her palm." This shows that they both felt such a strong connection in that moment, as if their touch was charged with energy and feeling. However, Park still thinks Eleanor feels weird or uncomfortable after this moment because she won't look at him all day. But on the bus ride back, she holds his hand, which proves that even though she was nervous while he was touching her at first, she still liked it and felt like it meant something. She even felt comfortable even to do it back. She has never felt this way for anybody else and was even calling Park a "stupid Asian kid" just weeks before, which shows how love is gradually changing Eleanor into a different person.
                 In conclusion, despite how hard it is on both Eleanor and Park as Eleanor often struggles to let go of the insecure personality she once held and gain confidence-even when they become closer and Park makes it clear that he truly loves her for who she is, in the end their trouble was worth it because they had such an amazing, irreplaceable connection and relationship. Eleanor falling for Park is something that makes her see herself and the world so differently than she had before-her feelings for him almost softened her a little. Eleanor thinks Park is beautiful and she can never stop thinking about him. She misses him all the time and looks forward to seeing him on days she doesn’t, when before Eleanor had nothing to look forward to but the horrors of a nasty father, a broken family and her own insecurity. Many people, even teenagers, hope to find that one person, someone who we feel is perfect for us-who will change us, who will love and care about us more than we thought anyone could, and this makes us a little different from Eleanor and Park, as they were never hoping to find that person. But those of us who are lucky enough to stumble upon that person along the way, as Eleanor and Park, might truly understand how amazing it is that they did.

Backwater Essay

Backwater

It’s not easy for everyone to understand the people around them. Backwater by Joan Bauer follows Ivy, a girl who struggles to find her place as a history lover and as a person in general, among a family bustling with lawyers. Her father can’t help but to continuously persist the importance and greatness of law upon Ivy as she grows up, which sadly pushes Ivy into a lonely corner, where these ideas are not a key part of life. It’s an isolation interrupted only by the presence of her loving and supporting Great Aunt Tib and her best friend, Octavia. But apparently, she’s not the only misfit in the family, she learns as she seeks her lost, hermit aunt Josephine, on a crazy and terrifying journey. The lesson that can be extracted from Ivy and Josephine’s experiences is that the way people act towards us constantly effects us throughout our lives.

 Ivy isn’t able to feel comfortable around her own family. For example, while they were playing “law” scrabble, a game where they draw a letter and define a law term that starts with that letter off, Ivy sits in the corner and reads. This, in itself seems strange, considering her whole family is participating. But finally, after she gets annoyed, she stands up and says quietly “P, for peace.” Everybody looks at her strangely afterward, silently (and verbally) disagreeing. This little scene suggests that it’s hard for her to feel a part of her family--and in any given situation, big or not. Furthermore, it’s not only a sense of detachment from her family that seems to hold Ivy down a lot, but also a feeling of insecurity about herself, which her dad clearly creates for her. Ivy loves history. Learning about history and specifically her family’s history is all she ever wants. It’s knowledge. It’s adventures, not her own, but of the people who she tirelessly studies and pursues. It’s what she wants out of life, to be a historian. But Ivy’s dad is not very supportive of her, being a lawyer and a person who can’t stand seeing anybody around him not one. It’s never been up to him to try to understand why anyone might not desire this in life, never mind a daughter who has her heart and soul set on a completely different career. So, as Ivy grows up, this strong attitude he holds has a big influence on her. For example, he says, “You are totally enslaved by this obsession!” “I could be on drugs. I could be smoking 5 packs of cigarettes a day. I could be—“Getting ready to study the law!” I could almost mouth the words myself. This shows that her dad doesn’t influence her in a way that makes her want to change herself to comply to her dad and her whole entire family, generations and generations of lawyers, but rather prove herself to him. She isn’t able to just be herself.

Also, the way her dad and family treats her with the little, if no respect they have for her passion influences Ivy’s feelings outside of her home, in parts of her life that have recently surfaced. Ivy is willing to hunt down a long gone hermit aunt, Josephine, who lives in the mountains--just for the chance to connect with someone who might be similar to she is, who wasn’t able to fit in within the family. And it’s all the pressure and confusion and insecurity that her dad has caused for her that have built up inside and induced the motivation, the drive that keep her going on a crazy adventure that effects her in many ways. When she finally meets her Aunt she is able to gain a whole new level of insight about her father and about life. Her aunt has this completely unusual life. She lives with birds. It would be easy for Ivy to think she’s crazy and not listen to what she has to say, but she isn’t. She’s simply different. And through her, Ivy is able to gain a lot of valuable ideas. For example, Josephine mentions that her father used to fish, as well as suggests that he has a “gentler side”. Ivy doesn’t believe this-she’s never seen her father in this light. She has only known her dad as somebody who was hard or aggressive, not gentle. Furthermore, this quote evidently helps the reader see more of not only Ivy’s father, but of Josephine. She did leave her home and her family to escape the pressures of people. However, the way she was able to say that her brother had “a gentler side” even despite all the trouble she faced with him during their childhood shows that she has a capacity to reach deeper and see more.

In conclusion, her father’s lack of understanding and appreciation of Ivy, time and time again, influences Ivy into doing something she might never thought she would do, as his misunderstanding of Josephine did to her years ago. Although for Josephine, it was something that, along with a strong tendency and need for being alone, she knew she had to go to greater measures for. Many teenagers can relate to this novel. While some aspects of Ivy might be hard for us to relate to, others can be viewed throughout ourselves more easily. Many desire the privilege of being understood--and being misunderstood by people close to us can cause a deep hurt. But above all, misunderstandings, and many other emotions for that matter, make us want to find those people who may know what just we’re going through, no matter how hard it is to reach them.