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Turtles All The Way Down Sparknotes

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Turtles All The Way Down While she discovers her connections with friends, family, and a potential love interest, Aza, the main character in John Green's Turtles All the Way Down, battles anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Green's main character, Aza investigates issues with identity, friendship, and mental health through her journey. The narrative makes it clear that the book's main message is really how crucial it is to develop self-acceptance and a sense of control in the face of uncertainty. Turtles All the Way Down by John Green is a compelling examination of mental illness, friendship, and self-discovery that also emphasizes the influence of one's environment and life experiences on their own sense of reality and identity. Aza …show more content…

There is a maturity lesson that comes with having a parent pass away. We saw a lot of character growth and a lot of finding herself from Aza. Aza has a difficult time fighting her intrusive thoughts; she puts her insights to the side in order to figure out where Davis's dad was and what happened to him. We see Aza especially struggling when she gets so paranoid she starts to drink hand sanitizer. While her intrusives were violently yelling at her Aza explained her actions as “ I didn't care. Pressed the dispenser, rubbed the foam all through my hands. Pressed it again, and shoved a scoop of it into my mouth” (Green 229). At this moment she does not care about the consequences of her actions and is seeking immediate relief without regard for her own well-being. She's simply just acting on her intrusives. We've seen bad habits of hers many times throughout the novel. This is just one of many examples of Aza pretty much hitting rock bottom. Though with Aza’s character development, she starts to gain control over her OCD and anxiety, allowing her to see herself as more than just her mental health struggles. She does begin to understand that her thoughts and behaviors are not entirely her fault and that she is not defined by her illness. She does manage to find her sense of identity through her love for writing. She uses writing as a tool to express herself and make sense of her thoughts and feelings. Her work on the fanfiction project with Daisy helps her gain confidence in her writing abilities and she begins to see herself as a writer. Aza's journey to finding her sense of identity is a complex and ongoing process that involves her relationships with others, her mental health struggles, and her creative

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Her mom loves her sister Angela, but doesn’t like turtle at all. Also, Turtle’s hobby is to play in the stock market, and she hates it when she loses money. Turtle is a very brave girl, because she had the courage to go into the room that Sam Westing had lived in before he’s gone. Even when some other kids went in there, and they were screaming when they came out. She’s also a smart and precocious

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As the story progresses we come to understand the reason behind all of this. Unfortunately her home life is not the best as she lost her brother and her mother a victim of attempting

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637 Words | 3 Pages

Vicente Quintana Ms. Herrera English 3 18 September 2016 Native American Mythology Native mythology are stories about humans, animals and deities that try to explain the origins and values of a given culture. Some examples of native mythology stories are: The Navajo Origin Legend, When Grizzlies Walked Upright, and The Earth on Turtle’s Back. Each of these myths have their own details and certain ways on how the creations went, but they all have similar beliefs and customs. The Navajo Origin Legend is about a ceremony that created the first humans by the power of wind. The people believed that the wind was the god because it is what brought us to life and is what keeps us alive since we breathe out air until we pass away.

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1284 Words | 6 Pages

Also, now that she realizes what she could have done all along or what her parents could have done I do believe that this makes her sort of resent her parents in a way because of how she looked back on her life before.. (INSERT QUOTE HERE) But because she soon after starts to work on her novels specifically about her life and how she grew up it further shows her character as a person and how she finds this as a way to sort of cope or really just own up to herself and everyone else about who she really is inside. Not only this but that there are more to people than how they appear to be, we can never truly know someone or assume the way someone lived based on how they've found their

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683 Words | 3 Pages

For centuries, Native Americans have passed down creation myths from generation to generation. Creation myths always “describe how the universe, the Earth, and life began” (33). The Iroquois’ creation myth, retold as “The World on the Turtle’s Back”, describes the creation of Earth and of life as we know it today. In a Kiowa myth from The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momoday, the narrator (the author) describes a myth detailing the creation of the Big Dipper constellation that he had heard from his grandmother. By analyzing these myths, I have recognized the similarities between the Iroquois and the Kiowa despite cultural differences.

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3294 Words | 14 Pages

John Green’s, Turtles All the Way Down is a young adult novel that encapsulates the experience of a seventeen year old girl who struggles with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The story begins by the main character, Aza, sitting at her luch table thinking about how she has no real control over her own life. The first episode which explores Aza’s OCD occurs when her best friend Daisy is talking to her at the luch table, but Aza can not hear a word Daisy is saying. Daisy is a loud and outspoken character whose main love in life is to write fictional stories about Star Wars characters. She has an ethusiaticfollowing and plenty of people read her stories online.

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499 Words | 2 Pages

In the allegory “The Turtle,” the author John Steinbeck explains that as life gets harder people work hard to succeed, and people may try to get in the way. Although the story does talk about a turtle climbing an embankment, people can relate to this story on an emotional level because they can understand overcoming the struggles in life. The struggles in life depend on what goals people set out to achieve. In this paper, the writer will examine the allegorical meanings of the turtle.

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1178 Words | 5 Pages

During that time there are highs and lows, it can be difficult to pull yourself up, so it is important to develop strategies that work for you to help accept yourself. Aza has an obsession with C. diff bacteria. There was a point in the story, where Aza became scared of kissing David as all her thoughts were dedicated to thinking about how the bacteria would transfer in her and therefore she would become infected. Moving through the story, Aza was more open to sharing her thoughts with others to receive the support she needed, thus realizes how she needs to work with what she has. Aza was not magically cured in the end

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1083 Words | 5 Pages

Since the beginning of civilization, countless cultures, including the Cherokee and Iroquois, developed stories in order to explain their views on creation and reflect the values and traditions in their culture. The Iroquois developed a myth called “The World on the Turtle’s Back”, while the Cherokee recorded “The Story of Corn and Medicine”. Both myths reveal the importance of nature, including plants, in the Iroquois and Cherokee cultures, and they follow a similar path of creation that starts with water and darkness and the expanding of mud to form land. However, the Iroquois myth focuses on human harmony with nature and the disharmony between genders, while the Cherokee myth points out the disharmony with nature and the greater equality

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506 Words | 3 Pages

The Native American origin myth "The Earth on Turtle's Back", retold by Michael Cuduto and Joseph Bruchac, displays how connected the Onondaga individuals are with the spiritual world and their inner self. They rely deeply on their instincts and thoughts related to them to lead them to make important decisions within their lives about the future. their culture has many compelling attributes as well as a strict cultural system and ritualistic bahaviors. The Onondaga individuals adhere to a lifestyle that creates happiness on a level that far surpasses what we, in the modern age, see as acceptable.

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707 Words | 3 Pages

How the World Uniquely Begins Native American myths and the Christian Bible both offer stories about how the world began.. In “The Earth on Turtle’s Back” and Genesis 1, both tales have similar values and ideas. These two stories compare in that both tell the importance of water, the fact that Earth came out of the water, and the existence of supreme beings; in contrast, each story has a unique idea of how the world came into being. “The Earth on Turtle’s Back,” a story from the Onondaga tribe, an original Native American group, is a myth which relates a story about the beginning of the world. Water is below the Skyland and it becomes an issue when the Great Tree is uprooted.

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718 Words | 3 Pages

In various cultures, traditional stories of a universal beginning relate to the beliefs and rituals that are prevalent within that society. Although these creation stories differ among cultures, all display similar characteristics which constitute archetypal settings of creation myths, such as a great tree, the landmass from a watery chaos, and the fall of man. In the Iroquois’ creation myth, “The World on the Turtle’s Back”, the display of archetypal settings parallels the creation depicted in the book of Genesis, but underlying each similarity are differing interpretations which allow for the stories to relate to its specific culture. In both “The World on the Turtle’s Back” and the Genesis creation story, a prominent characteristic is the great tree connecting heaven and earth.

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355 Words | 2 Pages

Native Americans have a very rich and interesting past. The story “The World on the Turtle’s Back” told by the Iroquois Indians is a story of how the world came to be and the good and evils in the world. The story “The Way to Rainy Mountain“ by Scott Momaday, is a story of about the Kiowa traditions and the way that they lived. Both of these stories show how important it is to respect the gods. “The World on the Turtle’s Back” is a myth about a man and a woman that lived in the sky world.

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805 Words | 4 Pages

World on Turtle 's Back fulfill the aspects of a traditional Native American creation story. The Iroquois people still consider the story the guide for how to live and thrive in the natural world. The deep rooted connections to nature and animals that has been held by many native tribes relates back to the initial actions taken by the first woman. The twins who symbolized the balance in nature and in humans have parallels all over the world. They are the representation of the constant battle for dominance that wages in the minds of all people.

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889 Words | 4 Pages

Slavery has been a problem that has lingered around since the beginning of time. Using other humans in inhumane ways for one's own benefit. Today alone, approximately 48 million people are enslaved, 7.5 million of them are children. Equally important, there are many topic points about slavery that need to be addressed for people's knowledge. These points include the problem with modern day slavery, why slavery continues, and how the world's ignorance about modern forms of slavery like human trafficking, human commodities, and forced labour is why slavery continues and is not yet stopped.

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