Journey,Challenge And Response Essay, Research Paper
Our unit of study Journey: Challenge and Response, focussing on the book Maestro and the film Stand By Me has helped me to discover a variety of new insights into the topic of journey and to learn more about the different types of journeys, their outcomes and consequences. I have also discovered a number of other resources that contain aspects of journey including the well-known book series, The Tomorrow Series by John Marsden as well as the book/film Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra.
In the dictionary journey is defined as the act or process of travelling from one place to another. After studying these different stories on journey I can see that a journey is not only travelling, it is not just getting from point A to point B. It is about what you take with you along that journey, and what you get out of it, physically, emotionally and mentally. It is the ups of and downs in life portrayed through a possible adventure or the like. There is no one journey the same and each carries different challenges along the way with different obstacles needing to be conquered in an effort to reach the end of the journey.
Maestro is a journey through the life of an unpleasant but extremely talented piano teacher and his gifted student Paul. Stand by Me is a film telling of four boys on a journey to discover a dead body, amongst other things. The Tomorrow Series tells of a journey undertaken by a group of teenage friends, when they travelled to a bush hideout known as hell for a camping trip. They returned to what was once civilisation, finding themselves in the middle of a war zone hell. Sleepers is a journey that four young boys experienced, commencing the day they were sent to a reform school for accidentally killing a man whilst pulling a prank on a hotdog vendor.
Every journey has challenges and therefore responses by the people involved. Journey has been portrayed in the text Maestro by describing the life of Paul Crabbe as he studies the piano with Herr Keller. It leads to Paul becoming older and learning more about life under the guidance of Keller and in turn, Keller learning about life from Paul even though this contrary to what he might think. Keller s journey through life has presented many challenges, such as losing his family during the war whilst he was playing the piano for Adolf Hitler. His response to this was to go into hiding, his life was completely turned upside down and he became harsh, cold and uncaring. Even his music changed, turning from Liszt and Rachmaninoff to playing Bach and Mozart. Paul s journey through life was like any teenager with the exception that Paul was different because he was an extremely gifted pianist. Paul was fortunate enough to learn from Keller even though he originally thought that Keller s teaching style was crazy. Eventually he realised its worth and learned a lot from him. Paul faced challenges with his love life. His first love the girl he admired was Megan but he eventually found true love with Rosie. This quote is from the end of the text Maestro and is about Paul coming to the realisation that his life had not been all that he had thought. Can I know that mine was a foolish, innocent world, a world of delusion and feelings and ridiculous dreams a world of music and still love it?
The film Stand by Me also covers the concept of journey. I have discovered that Stand By Me is about a journey carried out by four young boys. The journey was to see their first dead body and become heroes with its discovery. This adventure enabled them to escape their home lives. There were many challenges faced on the journey. The trek to find the body and then the actual discovery were an ordeal alone, on top of their actions after the event. When they found the body it was different to what they were expecting. It finally sunk in – it was a dead child, a kid the same age as them. The boys seemed to mature on the spot, deciding not to carry the body out in glory but to leave it as it was. This was their response to a big challenge that they faced. A quote from the film Stand By Me When we returned home that day the town looked different, it looked smaller this refers to the fact that after what they had been through on their journey their town appeared different in comparison, they had grown up and matured on their journey. They seemed to be no longer children, but adults.
The Tomorrow Series , an extremely popular set of books for teenagers was about a journey taken by a group of teenagers. It was unexpected and unplanned but this journey went on for years and changed their lives forever. A quote from Tomorrow when the war began , just before the teenagers discovered that a war had started I don t know if I was happy that day those tense and edgy feelings were getting stronger and stronger but I do know that I ve never been happy since . It was a journey that contained many challenges every day. The strength that was needed by these teenagers was phenomenal. They were in the middle of a war zone fighting the enemy to stay alive and remain in hiding whilst pining for their friends and family who were captured by the soldiers. They lost friends along the way, they lost family members but they still never lost their will to survive and beat the war. This journey was extremely difficult to face, there were so many challenges but the teenagers managed to conquer each challenge with a suitable response.
Sleepers is about the journey of four young boys who were sent to a reform school for accidentally killing a man during a childish prank. The time spent in the reform school changed their lives for the worse, forever. They suffered extreme emotional, physical and sexual abuse whilst in the reform school and never fully recovered from it. They were confronted with many challenges they had to face the abuse every day, living in constant fear. A quote from Sleepers – It doesn t take very long to know how tough a person you are or how strong you can be. I knew from my very first day at Wilkinson (reform school) that I was neither tough nor strong . This quote demonstrates just how difficult the challenges inside the reform school were. When they were older the time spent in the reform school caused two of them to become killers, cold and heartless, just like their offenders in the detention centre.
These four different stories about journey have taught me all about journey, challenges and response. Three of the stories Stand By Me , The Tomorrow Series and Sleepers involved journeys faced by children. These journeys were somewhat different to journeys that I have faced in my life. They were a lot more challenging and called for more willpower, strength and determination to respond to them.
After reading and watching the stories mentioned above I have learnt a lot more about the concept of journey. I feel that there is no single meaning for the word journey. It needs to be expressed in more words than a dictionary meaning can offer. A challenge is something faced within a journey. A person must confront the challenge to receive an outcome. A response is how the person involved answers the challenge, by either overcoming the challenge or succumbing to it. I have learnt that we can t just call a journey the act of travelling , a journey is much more in depth, involving effects and consequences.