I started a trilogy by Don Robertson a little while ago. The series follows a young boy named Morris Bird III. In the first book The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread he is in elementary school and goes on a adventure to find his best friend. In The Sum and Total of Now he is in middle school and must deal with adolescents and maturing. In The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened , the last of the trilogy he is in highschool and getting ready to go to college. Over the course of the series Morris has dealt with a lot of death. The main part of each book so far has had to do with a death. In the first book he deals with his best friends death. In the second it has to do with his grandmas death. And here in the final book he deals with his own pending death. Don includes all this death to show Morris' truest self.
Don Robertson makes each book centered around death to bring out the characters truest self in a realistic way. When Stanley, Morris' best friend, dies you see Morris stop being a kid. When he is traveling to see his friend he is still very innocent, but when Stanley dies you see a change. He stops looking to be helped and starts taking things into his own hands. There are many other people that were hurt from the explosion. He is just in elementary school but he steps up and helps people that are hurt. By doing this he helps you see the change in the character. A death always poses an opportunity for a major character change to to reveal something about a character.
In the second book Don kills Morris' grandma to illustrate that as much as Morris tries to push his family away he still needs them. When Morris' grandma gets sick Morris takes a real blow. Then on top of it all Morris' family just bickers and fights over his dying grandma's possessions. Nobody cares about his grandma, but she was someone that meant a ton to Morris and he feels like everyone is just pushing him and his grandma aside. This brings out the side of him that is still very kid-like and that he still needs his family to be there for him. But again Don brings out the different sides of Morris, he shows Morris still has strength by having him burn all his grandma's stuff. This illustrates The many aspects of people, again death brings this out.
In the third book Don forces Morris to deal with his own pending death to bring out his most vulnerable side and to show also how strong he is. Morris shows his true colors at this point. Morris seems to be weak and strong in different ways. Each death brings out new ones. The ones that his own death brings out are the fact that he can crack sometimes even though he puts everything on himself. It also show who he care about most and who he puts ahead of himself. He puts his sister and his girlfriend ahead of him and that shows strength and compassion for his family even after his mothers death. His father pushes him away and that makes him more distant but before his death his feeling comes back. This again shows Morris' truest self.
Don choses who and when he kills people to illustrate all the sides of Morris. Each death has its own significance to the arc of the story and to Morris.
Harper, I read both of your blog posts. The old one and this new one. You did a much better job revising this post. You are much for thorough with details and inferences. all your paragraphs have good ideas and are supported my evidence. Each paragraph sums up each of the books. And at the end you sum up what the main character's purpose is. I think you could work on that last paragraph. It is a good idea, but you could elaborate and support it. Good job!
ReplyDelete