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Touching Spirit Bear By Ben Mikaelsen

564 Words3 Pages

Touching Spirit Bear, written by Ben Mikaelsen, informs the reader about circle justice and contestant, Cole Mathews. Cole has always been irresponsible his whole life, thinks he is the best and everyone is afraid of him, and has always taken unnecessary actions. After beating up a classmate, Cole's life would change. Cole enters the circle justice program and is forced to go to an island in Alaska. Wanting to swim away, Cole burns his prebuilt shelter and swims against the tides, but is pushed back. Cole all of a sudden sees a spirit bear and wants to fight it, stabbing it, grabbing fur, and punching it. Then gets mauled by it and blacks out. Cole finally realizes what nature has to offer and starts his transformation. At the beginning of Cole's transformation, …show more content…

Cole starts to care about the world around him and the world he is a part of. After Cole is rescued he says he saw spirit bear and people don't believe him, trying to be better, Cole made a decision that he would for now on never lie and let go of the only evidence of spirit bear he had into the water, its fur. After Cole's rescue, he needs people to forgive him. Circle Justice is not willing to bring Cole back to the island, but Edwin and Garvey are willing to give Cole a second chance. So Cole sells his belongings and goes back to the island, building his shelter and collecting firewood. While Cole is on the island, Edwin teaches Cole a few ways to relive his anger. First, Edwin takes Cole to the cold pond to clear his mind, then makes Cole carry a rock referred to as the ancestor rock and roll it down a hill. Edwin tells Cole to think of the ancestor rock as his anger, rolling down a mountain and being let go. Learning from his mistakes, Cole starts to observe the atmosphere around him and sees animals. By observing a creature, you can learn a lot about them, creatures provide teachings for us every

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When Cole finally forgave, he allowed himself to move on and allows us to find happiness

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Cole has changed how he feels about nature from the beginning of the book, exactly like how the first and final haikus differ from each other. The following statement shows how he has changed and realized he is a small part of a big circle, and is what inspired the “realizing life’s a circle” part of the haiku: “Standing beside the totems, explained to Peter that being invisible was being a part of life’s circle and accepting it. ‘This morning, when we forgave each other, we also forgave ourselves,’ he said. ‘We allowed ourselves to become a part of the big circle. . . .’” (Mikaelsen 239), whereas in the beginning Cole hated the idea of the circle and only thought of

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The story starts off by Cole going to circle justice, and they decide a punishment for Cole, they settle on putting him on a remote island in Alaska. Cole gets dropped off there, and he is very mad at everybody he knows, in fact he is so mad that he burns his shelter down. Then he sees the spirit bear, he yells at it. He threw things at it, and it attacked him, and he almost died, and after a massive tree almost landed on him,

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Wait, I think I'm going too far and putting my life here, so now Cole is banished to an island and mauled by the Spirit Bear. And I honestly think that Cole deserved it, because it changed him to become better and not worse, and he has found meaning in life and has changed for the better. And I think Cole will be able to change, because after he has touched the Spirit Bear, he feels trusted and he trusts the Spirit Bear in return, and he finally views the world as beautiful unlike before. Lastly, I think after Cole returns from his banishment, the people in circle justice will want him to undergo normal justice, and then Cole does some crazy things to prove that he has changed, for example pushing a rock up and down a hill. So in summary, I think Cole is broken, Cole

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Of course, Cole did not take this seriously, so he let his anger in control and burned down his only shelter with food, and everything he needed to supply him on the island. His wild laughter had mocked the world, and everyone he had ever known. He thought of every time his dad has beaten him, and every time his mom never cared. But now Cole was on his own, and he was in control, no one was stopping him. But after he felt a slight mood of loneliness, Cole started to feel emotional.

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The first thing that Gavin helped Cole with was to get him into circle justice to get him to go to an island so he could learn responsibility. When they got there, Cole was very mad and did not want to be there. This is also when the spirit bear came in. Right now Cole is full of anger and does not want to be on the island and then he sees the spirit bear

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I already infer that he is definitely heading back though the proof of this is right after page 112 it states PART TWO RETURN TO SPIRIT BEAR in big bold letters. This has to mean Cole is going to return to the island and try to face spirit bear with a new attitude and hopefully this time he can succeed. “But the Spirit Bear was also a memory that would never disappear from his mind or heart,” (Page 112). This could mean that Cole wants to return to the island, what I mean by this is when you get connected to someone or something you tend to want to go to it or attract to it like a couple they always want to see each other so if they have the chance they go to each other. In this case Cole wants to return to the island because he had a connection to it, he is determined to see the spirit bear again.

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Cole was beaten by him throughout his childhood. This pain and anger gave him the personality and characteristic to inflict pain on other people. The two final themes have a very strong connection. In order to heal, mentally and physically, you have to learn to forgive and receive forgiveness. This was a lesson the reader and the main character, Cole, experience throughout the book.

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Garvey and Edwin help to get Cole over his anger, one way they do this is by being the first people to care about Cole. Another way Garvey

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Later, when he returns to the island, he starts using dances and methods to heal with Garvey and Edwin's help. One by one, Edwin and Garvey taught Cole their ways. First, Edwin brought Cole to an ice-cold pond to clear his mind. The idea was that Cole would be affected not only mentally but also his injuries from the bear attack would be numbed. Cole starts hesitant, not wanting to wake up early in the morning just to freeze, but soon Cole becomes ¨afraid he might oversleep¨ (Mikaelsen 194).

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Then at the end of the book when Peter and Cole see the spirit bear together, the relationship developed into the beginning of a friendship. “Peter insisted. ‘Will anyone believe us?’ ‘It doesn’t matter what other people think or believe,’ Cole said. ‘It’s what you believe.

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At the beginning of the novel, Cole Matthews is a vicious teenager who thinks he is superior to everyone, but is, in fact, hiding behind a shield of anger, the result of being brutally abused by his drunken father. Cole’s father, Mr. Matthews, drinks non stop until he becomes a monster, and then ruthlessly beats Cole up. When talking to Garvey, a proud, Tlingit indian, who is also his parole officer, Cole opens up about his father’s abuse saying, “‘You don’t know what it’s like being hit over and over until you’re so numb you don’t feel anything!” (Mikaelsen 28).

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Now imagine having to make a decision that determines who lives and who dies. Imagine being at school where you are to feel safe and having a tragic fire take place. This is just one of the many challenges Cole faces. In chapter seven, he goes over the traumatic event with a flashback. He goes over how he sees the children he dead, crushed or burned alive.

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Everything will turn out right in the end, and Cole exhibits this. The whole reason that Cole ended up o the island in the first place is because he made bad choices. These choices led to more bad choices and then Cole had a traumatic experience. This changes Cole’s life forever.

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For example, when Cole purposy bothered the Spirt Bear and later on ended up getting mauld by the animal. It is obvious that Cole’s decisions and actions against banishment lead him to fail the act. Cole’s consistent negative attitude made him dislike the idea of meaning humane. Since the beginning of the book, Cole has satisfied himself with anger. Cole believes that he can concor anything with his anger.

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