Touching Spirit Bear Essay

 Authors Note: This is an essay describing the conflicts that occur in the book Touching Spirit Bear.

          
          I am reading the book, Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen. It is about a boy named Cole who is a bully at his school and robs places. He beat up a kid at his school named Peter Driscal and caused him to have permanent brain damage. Cole was banished to a deserted island for one year. On the island, he encountered the Spirit Bear, a mythical bear that the Tlingit Tribe believes in. It remained calm in a time of adversity and Cole, who thought that everyone was afraid of him, was enraged when the Spirit Bear was calm and relaxed. Cole tried to kill it, but the bear was just pure muscle and beat him to the point that he was basically paralyzed. There conflicts in this book that can be explained.

          The first conflict is person versus nature. This happens when the Spirit Bear and Cole got into the big brawl. Cole was told that anything you do to animals, you do to yourself. So when he tried to kill the bear, the bear tried to kill him and won. Cole realized this, finally, when he was almost paralyzed and I believe is trying to turn his life around because he you learn a lot from near death experiences. Also Cole believes that this is God’s way of giving him one last chance to make a difference in his society.

          Another conflict in this book is person versus society. Cole is well known by many people for terrible reasons. His society knows that he is a robber and a bully. He will never change his past, but he can perfect his future by turning his life around for the better. The society is scared of Cole and believes that he should be in jail or juvie for the rest of his life for what he continually does to the society. To the society, Cole is like an adult and they believe that he should be treated like one and be locked in jail for a long time.

          The last conflict in this book is person versus self. When Cole was on the deserted island after being beat up by the Spirit Bear, gave up on life. He states, “Why can’t the seagulls wait a little longer until I die.” This clearly shows that Cole can’t fight the pain any longer and wants to die. This I believe is the easy way out. Cole has shown to be a very strong and tough person who would never give up. He would be the last person anyone would think who would give up on a fight.

          As you can see, Cole is a tough kid who has a bad attitude. He believes that everyone should be afraid of him and that attitude left him almost dead in the middle of nowhere. He also always took what he thought was the easy way out. Cole first thought that going to this island was the easy way out of not going to jail, but proved to be a lot more than he could handle. He wants to change his life around and I know that for a fact. If he wants to, it will take a while to do and will test himself in many different ways, but I believe that if he really wants to change his life, he can and will.