Authors Note: This is the character analysis I did for L.A. class.
Character Analysis
In the book Touching Spirit Bear there is a boy named Cole
Matthews. He has major anger issues and
wants everyone to fear him. He wants to
be the top dog in his area. Cole was
abused by his father and his mom was a drunk.
Cole decided to break into a hardware store. Cole then got ratted out by a boy named Peter
Driscal for breaking into the store.
Cole got very angry at Peter and beat him up and smashed his head into
the sidewalk. Cole had to go The
Justice Circle where he had to find out whether he goes to jail or a remote
island for a year. Cole ended up
getting sent to the remote island to get rid of his anger. Cole was still very angry that he had to go
to the island. The night he got there he
saw what is called the spirit bear. The
spirit bear wasn’t afraid of Cole. Cole
got angry at the fact that the spirit bear didn’t fear him so he went to try
and kill the spirit bear. The bear
attacked Cole when he went to stab it.
Cole was on the verge of dying. As
Cole lays there after getting mauled, he realizes what he was doing. He realized that he was scared of the fact of
being alone and he wanted to change. His
whole right arm was very injured he could hardly use it. Cole went back to Minneapolis to recover in
the hospital.
After he
recovered he had to go back to the
island to finish his year on the island.
That’s when Cole really wanted to change because he got a second chance
instead of having to go straight to jail.
He went to a pond every morning to swim and to think even if the water
was freezing, nothing would stop Cole from going to the pond. After the pond he would get the same big rock
every morning. The rock was supposed to
be his ancestors and his anger. He
carries the rock up a hill and then rolls it down. It is supposed to roll his anger away. He dances a dance every night on what he
learned that day. He even carves the
animal that he sees that day into a big log.
This routine every day really calms down Cole and soothes him. Cole is really changing the way he sees
things on life. Peter tried committing suicide
twice during the time that Cole was at the island so Garvey decided to send
Peter to the island to soothe himself like Cole does. Peter stayed away from Cole because he was
still terrified of him. Cole tried his
best to make Peter realize that he changed from his old ways. Peter finally decided to start going to the
pond with Cole. Peter always pushed Cole
into the water because he still hated Cole for what he did, but he always did
it when Garvey wasn’t looking. Then one
day Peter decided to go to the pond with Cole without Garvey. They went for the regular soak and then they
got out. Peter started to push Cole and
Cole refused to fight back because he really did change. Peter started striking Cole in the stomach
and punching him in the face. Cole still
didn’t fight back. He let peter beat him
up without fighting back at all. Peter
eventually stopped. Peter and Cole
started becoming friends after Peter beat Cole up. The time of being on the island was almost
over and Cole carved anger into his totem.
Him and Peter carved a circle into the totem. The circle represented that everywhere on the
circle is a beginning and an end. The
following day they had to go back to Minneapolis.
