Making Connections Report Name: Annie Fong Teacher: VAU
Children are young human beings that grow up to be like their parents. But is it possible for them to make decisions and actions that can change the way the family function? These four texts, ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ by Sue Monk Kidd, ‘All the Bright Places’ by Jennifer Niven, ‘Eleanor and Park’ by Rainbow Rowell, and ‘The Glass Castle’ written by Jeannette Walls, all have children growing up in a dysfunctional family. They choose to make decisions and actions that can either have a positive or negative impact showing that even the smallest decisions can change your life.
Making changes that can benefit people in the long term, is a way some children have chosen to act on their parent’s behaviour. ‘The Secret Life of
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When August Boatwright tells Lily, ‘Well if you have a queen and a group of independent minded bees that split off from the rest of the hive and look for another place to live, then you’ve got a swarm.’ She suddenly realises that she is just like the bees as she represents the swarm that is looking for a new hive. She has been broken out of her previous hive and needs a new place to stay. Independent-minded reflects Lily as a character because she understands what is right and when something is wrong, Lily feels the need to make changes to benefit her for the better. Similarly in the text, ‘The Glass Castle’, Jeannette, like Lily, makes the decision to leave home for the better. She tells us, ‘I didn’t have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I live in a world that at any moment could erupt fire.’ This quote shows Jeannette’s characteristics as a determined, independent and young girl that is living in an unstable family. She is saying that even if she doesn’t have the answers to everything, she knows that if something is wrong, she will have to take action sooner or later. In the same way, Eleanor