Cody Goddard

April 10 2015

Character Analysis

Cole Matthews

You know that one person who is the best in the world?The one who is vindictive and cruel. In the start of this book Cole Matthews is a very aggressive person. He robs a hardware store and no one knew who did for a week, then he began bragging it that it was him. When Peter Driscal finds out that it was Cole he reports it to the police. When Cole found out he cornered and beat up Peter so badly he was hospitalized. My book is called "Touching Spirit Bear" and it's written by Ben Mikaelsen. This book's main character is Cole Matthews who has some anger issues. To deal with this he is sent to an island for a year to live on his own.

In the beginning of this book Cole finds himself facing a jail sentence because of what he has done to Peter Driscal. Peter is in the hospital for 6 months and will need counselling and physical therapy for the rest of his life. Cole is held in a detention center until they can come up with a reasonable jail sentence for what he has done. This is the plan until someone name Garvey steps in and suggests circle justice. Circle justice is made for an alternative of jail where you heal. To do circle justice Cole's friends, family, neighbours and community members come together to decide what they think would be a reasonable sentence. It takes about 10 gatherings before the circle can come to the decision to send him to an island in Alaska for a year. Someone will check on him about once a week. He will live in a shelter during this time.

Cole is a very angry person in the start of this book. For example, as soon as Garvey (who is the one who arranged this) leaves he takes the oil for the lantern from his supplies and dumps it on all the supplies and shelter. He rummages through the supplies to find some matches. He set everything on fire and you could probably see it from outside the bay. The reason he has become so angry is because his dad beat him when he was younger. He has learned that when you're angry you just start hitting and beating on people. So that is how he expresses his anger. It is a terrible way to express his emotions, but when that is all you've learned you don't know any better.

Cole is a dishonest person in this book. Cole makes Garvey think that he wants to be in circle justice. Cole just thinks that the circle is all baloney and is an easy way out. He lets Garvey go and work as hard as he can to get Cole into the program. Cole tells Garvey how grateful he is that Garvey has done this for him, where in his mind he is just happy to get out of his jail cell. Cole keeps up acting like this while he is in the circle. Like telling them it was just in the heat of the moment and any other time he would have hurt Peter that badly. He makes the circle believe he is ready to heal.

One year later Cole is changed and is a nice person. He is now going back to the island. To get here Cole had to sell all of his possessions. He was sad to see most of them go, but something's he did not care if they stayed or went. While he is here Peter is not doing well. He has attempted to take his life twice. Cole is starting to feel guilty and is wondering how he can help Peter. His idea is he should have Peter come to the island. He can learn the same way Cole has. He can soak every morning in a pond just like Cole has been doing while he can. Sometimes he can't because it is just physically to cold for him to stay in for long. Peter could see how Cole is changed and do the same.

This character's name is Cole Matthews who changes a lot in this book. Cole is cross and misleading, but during this book he changes and becomes nice and generous. Cole and his traits change the book because the way he acts is the way the book goes. The book follows Cole's direction. Cole begin's this book angry and dishonest. He is angry because his dad used to beat him till he was numb. He is dishonest because he does not want to stay in the detention center. By the end of this book he becomes nice. To get here he lived on the island and found ways to cope with his anger.
Cody Goddard

"School should be completely run by students"

I disagree with this statement. 

People believe that adults are not correctly running schools. So does that mean we should have students run it for themselves? I believe that adults should run the system because kids do not know how, and kids can get carried away with things like that. They may not like the teacher that day so they go and fire them from their job. Or they may not like getting up early to go to school so they change school hours. Some students do not like certain classes so they might get rid of them.

If we let the adults run the system we learn what we need to. We have ok school hours and most things go smoothly. There may be some problems with the way adults run schools, but if we bring things to their attention they have the power to change them. We cannot have just one person bring things to their attention because they will think that everyone else likes the way things are going. Adults also have the knowledge and understanding on how to speak and deal with people and the way they're feeling in that instant.