Braden Kurbin ELA 1 Miss Sullivan 2/21/23 TSB Character Analysis Draft Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen is a book about a teenager named Cole Matthews, and bis journey of healing. Throughout his life, Cole has been a very violent and angry person because of the abuse he has suffered from his dad. In the beginning of the book, Cole gets into a fight with a boy named peter Driscoll. The fight ends in Peter having to be hospitalized to receive treatment for his injuries, and Cole being put into a program called Circle Justice. Circle Justice is a program that sends Cole to an Alaskan island to go through a spiritual journey to heal. At first, he tries to escape, and gets heavily injured by a Spirit Bear while trying to kill it. Later, Cole …show more content…
The bear mauls him, and leaves him to die. While he is laying on the ground in the forest, the bear comes back. While the bear is examining him, cole tries something. On page 95, it states “ Cole for ed his hand forward until his fingers touched the bear’s moist white coat.” Cole changed, going from trying to kill the bear, to just wanting to couch it, after being mauled by the same bear. In chapter 16, while Cole is talking to Edwin and Garvey he says “After I was mauled, when I thought I was going to die, I felt like just a plant or something, like I wasn’t important. I didn’t know why I even existed. That scared me. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I realized that I was dying and I had never really even lived. Nobody ever trusted me. I had never loved anybody, and nobody had ever really loved me.” In this moment, Cole is reflecting over what happened after he was almost killed by the Spirit Bear, and how it affected him. Cole changed during his time after the attack, by taking time and focusing on the little things, the nature around him, the sparrows in the nest as seen on page 80, and the true beauty of everything. After he looks at the little things, he realizes that he has no real power, and how there is a balance in everything. On the island, the balance in Cole was changing, as seen on page