An Essay On Tree Girl By Ben Mikaelsen

Many Indio’s were injured, killed, and sexually assaulted during the Silent Holocaust in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996. A perfect example of how brutal this war was is the book “Tree Girl” by Ben Mikaelsen. Tree Girl is based off of a true story about a 15-year-old Mayan girl living in a small canton in Guatemala. This book perfectly depicts what it was like for her to try and survive the elimination of her people, and the trials she had to endure. An important lesson we learn from this book is that we need hope to survive. We see this a lot as we read the book. Hope is the reason you try to survive. To start, hope is something many people lose when experiencing something as traumatic as the Silent Holocaust. After returning home from selling

This causes her to fear she won’t be able to properly send Antonio, and Alicia to the afterlife, or the rest of her family. While Gabriella dug shallow graves with a stick and her hands, she lost hope of her family safely crossing into the afterlife, and she doesn’t know what would happen to them. As she started her journey towards Mexico, she had nearly lost all her hope. We first see that hope return when Gabriella hears whimpering coming from a bush near the edge of the woods. Hoping that it might be someone she knows who rushes to the bush. “I had only walked a few hundred meters into the forest when a whimpering sound of a hurt animal caught my attention.” This flicker of hope is what caused Gabriella to rush forward and find her brother and sister. Without that hope she could have passed that bush without looking for the source of the noise. In this case, she regained her hope of survival for her siblings. The journey to the Mexican border is very difficult. When Gabriella had her siblings, this task seemed a lot less daunting. As they traveled, her younger brother Antonio passed due to an injury and got back at the