The Red Kayak Analysis

Your parents are always telling you to do do the right thing, aren't they? Priscilla Cummings did not miss the opportunity to convey the same message. In The Red Kayak, Priscilla Cummings is trying to show that doing the right thing, no matter the consequences is always the correct path to take. In this paper, I will give a few examples of why I think the theme in the story is to always do the right thing. These examples are that Brady had the choice to call out to the kayak, the scene with Digger and J.T. in court, and I will show you this in a more philosophical way. Priscilla Cummings tried to show this theme multiple times and I will show you two of the most important scenes. Early in the book, protagonist Brady witnessed a kayak rowing down the river in dangerous waters and wondered about telling it to turn around. He then thought about it again, but didn’t and this shows that he had given himself a choice. “‘Come on.’ I made eye contact with Digger when I said it again: ‘Let’s yell something.’ But we didn’t.” This quote shows that Brady thought about calling out to the kayak, but decided not to in the end. This decision resulted in a child named Ben dying and is one example of how doing the wrong thing can lead to something horrible. Second, Digger and J.T. had a choice in court. In court, they blamed the death on

Brady made the wrong choice and it resulted in the death of a child. Digger and J.T. made the right choice and that resulted in them getting a better sentence. I only wrote about two examples of this theme but there were many more. As you saw, doing the wrong thing resulted horribly and doing the right thing helped the person making that choice. Although these choices ended up on complete opposites of the scale, I think Priscilla Cummings was just trying to show that the right thing is always what a person should try to