"Bridge to Terabithia" by Katherine Paterson.

This is an essay I wrote for a literature class. It's part of my first completed quest. You know the drill by now.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

 Bridge to Terabithia is a book that starts out as an ordinary, typical slice-of-life book, only to abruptly take a sharp turn into a serious story of sudden tragedy; this facilitates its look at the topic of good and bad emotional outlets. The author’s writing style reflects the age of the characters and their seemingly simple, uncomplicated life throughout most of the book.

The book starts out as a relatively normal story of two middle-school kids named Jess and Leslie becoming friends based around their creation of the imaginary kingdom of Terabithia in the forest, hence the title. And for most of the book, that’s exactly what it is. (If anyone doesn’t want spoilers, say something now.) But then Leslie suddenly dies, and approximately the remaining fifth of the book focuses on Jess as he tries to cope with losing his only friend. Notably, the story has basically no foreshadowing of the death, which almost jumps out at the reader; this sudden appearance reflects its “out of nowhere” nature within the story’s world. This structure helps the reader to feel as Jess does about Leslie’s death.

Bridge to Terabithia seems to have a theme of handling emotions. At the beginning of the book, Jess expresses his emotions via drawings, which he shows to absolutely nobody; this reflects him keeping everything inside and not telling anyone about it. Leslie similarly internalizes her thoughts, though she shows it less. When Jess and Leslie create Terabithia, Jess has an emotional outlet; its unexpected removal, combined with the grief from Leslie’s death, causes him to start to emotionally fall apart. There is a supporting character who also reflects the theme: Janice Avery, a bully at Jess’s school. Towards the end of the book, Janice reveals to Leslie that she bullies others because she’s always angry over how her abusive father treats her. Janice serves as a foil for both Jess and Leslie; her destructive method of dealing with her emotions contrasts with their constructive creation of Terabithia (although, admittedly, the stuff they’re using Terabithia to deal with is not nearly as bad as Janice Avery’s problem).

Katherine Paterson’s style matches the main character and overall story. The book has a serious tone, and the narration is definitely written seriously; however, it does not make use of overly scholarly language. Sentences are no longer than they need to be; compound sentences are few and far between. Despite this, the sentences don’t feel choppy. They lead into one another while still remaining separate. After Leslie’s death, the style turns introspective and almost dreamlike as Jess tries to process what just happened.

In conclusion, Katherine Paterson uses a relatively straightforward narrative and a serious but not scholarly writing style to allow the storytelling to feel natural and make the emotional themes easier for readers to understand.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: The lower edge of E10+ for bullying and Leslie's (admittedly off-page) death.

Bridge to Terabithia gets 4 stars. It's not my new favorite book, but what it sets out to do, it does well.

(Endnote: I didn't have time before the due date to read the paper out loud to find stuff that doesn't work, so I didn't even notice the fact that my conclusion paragraph is a single sentence. Or that I had three sentences in a row with semicolons. I may have a semicolon obsession when writing formally...)