Touching Spirit Bear: Book Club #2

Marissa and I met again for book club about chapters 8-14:

We started off with some opinions, and went on to symbolism of the sparrows. At first Cole wanted them to die if he was dying, and then once they fell, he asked "you okay?" We talked about how the sparrows had their mom feeding him, and how he watched that and wished for that in his life. He later even pretended and pictured himself as a sparrow getting food from a mother bird.

We talked about how Cole is not not afraid of death because he almost died. I brought up that I had genuinely wondered how realistic it was that he changed so much and learned so much so quickly.

We then discussed the symbolism of how the blood from the spirit bears attack looked identical to when he attacked Peter. Marisa wrote the quote: "it reminded him of the bear's blood on the knife blade beside him. it also looked like the blood he had seen on the sidewalk after beating up peter. the blood looked identical" Peter felt guilt about Peter now that he knew what it felt like. Another one we talked about briefly was the storm coinciding with his weakness and helplessness.

We talked about the caterpillar he killed, even though was was also dying. Marisa brought up that he did feel bad about it later. This symbolism also connects to the sparrow symbol. He did not feel bad for the caterpillar, but he then felt bad for the sparrows.

Cole's whole deal with power then came up. He learned a lot when he learned that he is in fact in control of his life, and that changed him to actually wanting to live. This was what really turned Cole around.

We then talked about how he touched the spirit bear rather than spit on it. I said it allowed him to experienced trust immediately. Marisa brought up that it was a huge time for change for Cole, and that it was really important to the story, and also that that made him submissive to the bear.

Edwin is a character that we both cant really figure out. We dont really know why he has faith in Cole, because he does not really have a connection to Cole like Garvey does. We dont know much about his past, so we are predicting it has something to do with the tribe, and living on the island himself. I predicted that may Edwin was the one that sponsored Garvey when he was a kid.