A Walk Across The Sun Character Analysis

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This essay will deal with the main characters, Ruth from Small Great Things and Thomas from A Walk Across the Sun. Both characters grow and develop throughout their respective novels. Their personal growth and development are due to three factors: family and external parties, watershed events and the justice system.
In many ways the character of Ruth and Thomas are very similar, both are hardworking, extremely driven in their careers and enjoy the work they do. The parents of Ruth and Thomas play a large role in their personal growth and development in the novels. Thomas’s mother advises him to go to India in order to gain his life back and restore everything that is wrong – the separation of him and his wife. Like Thomas, Ruth is influenced a lot by her mother as she teaches Ruth everything. Ruth’s mom inspires her to work hard and achieve big. Without her mom, Ruth would not be where she is now. “It’s a strange thing, being suddenly motherless. It’s like losing a rudder that was keeping me on course.” (Picoult, 2016, p285) Her mother teaches Ruth humility and respect, important traits she passes along to Edison. With her mother’s guidance, Ruth learns how to be an excellent mother.
Other external parties also have an effect on the personal growth and development of the characters, these people being Turk (a white supremacist male and father of the baby who dies) and Priya (wife of Thomas). Ruth is “not the kind of person who sees the bad in everyone; that 's [her] sister,