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Touching Spirit Bear Sparknotes

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Essay on Touching Spirit Bear
By Lauren Lee-Chung

Changing is a process that many find trouble with pursuing. It is especially dependent on one’s experiences, for negative factors such as trauma, mental illness, or lack of motivation can truly make the process difficult. A similar procedure is portrayed in Touching Spirit Bear, a realistic fiction novel by Ben Mikaelsen. Cole Matthews is a distressed fifteen-year-old teenager who gets banished to an isolated Alaskan Island due to a recent crime of his, which involved smashing a fellow classmate’s head, Peter Driscal, into the sidewalk. On the island, Cole learns to heal and improve his poor habits by dealing with the trauma from his parents and facing the guilt from his past mistakes. He …show more content…

An example of this is shown when he winds up in the hospital following the brutalization from Spirit Bear. As the nurse cares for him, Cole is speaking with Garvey, a Tlingit elder who is his parole officer. Considering the fact that Garvey is the one who recommended this punishment for Cole instead of a typical jail sentence, he apologizes to Cole for getting him into this situation. However, instead of going ballistic like he’s done several times in the past, Cole replies by reassuring Garvey that it was his fault. This is an occasion that undoubtedly displays the effects that Cole’s experience on the island had on him. Furthermore, Cole returns from the hospital after six months, he is now in the juvenile detention center. Here, his mother visits him, who confesses her mistakes for not properly caring for her son. They say, “ ‘I wasn’t there when you needed me.’ ‘It’s okay, Cole said.’ ‘No, it’s not okay. But maybe we can change things.’ ... Cole clung to his mother even after she let go, then turned away to hide his misty eyes,” (Mikaelsen 122). When Cole tells his mother that it’s okay and hugs her voluntarily, it truly illustrates the contrast between Cole at the beginning of the book versus his character towards the end. Before, he had always blamed his actions on the trauma brought from his mother and father instead of forgiving anyone and moving on. However, this event demonstrates his development when it comes to being apologetic. Altogether, these interactions with Garvey and Cole’s mother proves his growing knowledge of forgiveness because they are both people that Cole has

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