Action and Reaction Our world, and lives, are full of trials and tribulations. Its our choices, actions, or lack thereof when facing these difficulties that influence the direction of our lives. Rene Denfeld explores this wonderfully in her novel The Enchanted. Her characters all face trials, of varying degrees of intensity, that not only shape them as people, but also, the direction of their lives. She delves into this process thoroughly through her character of the white-haired boy. He transforms from a hollow victim of abuse and a corrupt penal system into a man who did what was necessary to survive. When we first meet the whiter-haired boy, who is never named, he is still a sixteen-year old boy, he hasn’t become the hollow shell of a …show more content…
He is no longer the broken, used, throwaway boy. He can see the end of his sentence and the opportunities that wait for him outside of the bleak prison walls. “I have less than two years to go. Maybe twenty months to go, he realizes. It is like waking up. Twenty months is twenty moons. It is twenty birthdays celebrated back to back. It is one rising and the other ending, and it will pass” (216-217). He hasn’t come full circle, that would be impossible. He’ll never be able to regain the innocence or naivety that he had when he first entered the prison. He has learned, and is now cautious, planning how to avoid the abuse he has suffered through. “Tomorrow, he thinks, I will avoid mess. I will no longer go to the yard. I will stop wandering the prison. I will stay in my cell until the others pass. I will walk carefully in the halls, minding my back and watching at all times I will no longer go down any dark halls and especially not down any silent stairs” (217.) He has learned, and grown, from his painful experiences. He knows he’s changed, “I will find the places here that are safe for a boy – for a man – like me” (217). The white-haired boy will no longer allow himself to be taken advantage of. He will forever carry the pain of what he’s suffered through, but he can also carry hope, knowing that he is a survivor. He entered the prison a naïve boy that was easy prey on, a boy that made a mistake and was treated like a criminal. He will leave the prison as a man, who commit an awful crime to take his life back. He will be