The Red Kayik Analysis

“ ‘You didn’t have to make Ben die,’ I muttered before I began to cry.” In the novel The Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings, Brady, the protagonist, uses many different methods for coping with the challenges he faced such as the death of Ben DiAngelo. Some of the times where the reader saw how Brady coped with the intense situations he encountered were after the accident, when he discovered what J.T. and Digger did, and during the separation among his friends. The first time the way Brady’s coping method was shown was after he discovered Ben’s death when Brady was stressed out. Brady blamed himself for what happened to Ben, and he kept all of his feelings boiling up inside. He was living in the past and because of that his physical well being went away, “That night I couldn’t sleep.” (Cummings 56). The stressful situation is making Brady stay awake contemplating his thoughts and actions. Staying awake thinking about the past and blaming himself for everything that happened is one negative way Brady copes with his stress.

After the Kayal incident, many of Brady’s relationships change. J.T. distances himself after the accident for

Throughout the novel Brady becomes less and less open about sharing how he feels and deciding what the best thing for him to do is. When Brady talks to J.T. about restarting their friendship, it is a more mature route for Brady to take for his coping. On the other hand, when he discovers the death of Ben and the amount in Ben’s death that he and his friends were involved, Brady chose to keep the new challenges and knowledge enclosed inside of him which is very unhealthy. When people choose to continuously keep their feelings inside, it starts to become an unhealthy habit that people will fall back onto for support and comfort just like Brady did over the course of this