Were Rules Made to be Broken?

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Parents often wonder where their toddlers and grade-schoolers get their astounding amounts of energy. It is an inexplicable phenomena that nearly every person witnesses. Perhaps people’s attitudes determine how energetic they are. Maybe our thought process is what determines whether we are up for 14 hours a day or 18. Is it because we believe limitations exist that they do? Without the mentality that we have a finite amount of energy, would we be able to go without rest for days on end? Despite barriers of impossibilities, men have visited the moon, probes are being sent to the outer reaches of the galaxy and the inner workings of atoms start to reveal their inner workings. Even the code of life itself begins to give up its secrets. The human race has come far in attaining what was once thought to be impossible. In her story “Come On, Wagon,” Zenna Henderson takes the idea of possible and impossible and questions what they mean and how limitations are created.

Zenna Henderson chose prime characters to show these concepts. In making the narrator a primary character of the story, Henderson expressed complete thought processes without being obtrusive. The story is told from the eyes of a man who has little opinion of the world. The narrator has accepted what he has been told and what he has learned, but he is still receptive to new information. Although he is an adult, his mind is open to new possibilities and he consciously registers what has been categorized as impossible or possible. He looks at the entire picture and checks to see where individual people stand and where the rest of the world stands. In this story, his role is enhanced by his relationship with Thaddeus. As Thaddeus’ uncle, the narrator is not close to Thaddeus bu...

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...orld differently than nearly any other person on the planet. Like children, like Thaddeus, they will often see the simplest solution to a problem, and their solution will almost certainly be the best. Youthfulness makes itself evident in the eyes of such innovators with a deepness that matches that of a child. Unfortunately, children have not learned to defend their ideas and being impressionable, they will accept what they are told without questioning the given idea or defending their own work. Innovators have maintained a belief in changing the impossible to possible through an uncorrupted openness and childlike mindset for what is possibilities. Thanks to people inspired by the same movement as is displayed in “Come On, Wagon,” we constantly move beyond what is impossible with Zenna Henderson giving voice to moving forward, past the impossible and our own rules.

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