The Change

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.