Brent, a suicidal killer, is on the journey of his life to pay tribute to the victim's family. In Whirligig by Paul Fleischman, Brent Bishop is an adolescent who has traveled and moved many times, even so much that he knows the way to “fit in” all down to the choice of which ear the earring is placed. But when a socially important party goes astray, he becomes a killer of teenage Lea Zimora of Chicago. He is faced with multiple consequences when he accepts a journey to pay tribute to Lea and her family by making whirligigs and placing them at the four corners of the USA. Brent gains many new experiences and it opens his eyes up to multiple different things, however the reader is faced with a large, prominent question: How has the journey affected Brent’s past, present, and future life? Because of Brent’s suicidal actions, he has been faced with positive consequences, negative consequences, and consequences that severely change his life forever.
Brent has had many negative consequences from his suicidal actions. Brent’s journey of accepting his past and paying tribute to Lea’s spirit have forced him to leave everything behind. He was forced to do this and must leave his family and friends behind in order to move forward with his life. The novel also mentions that Brent is “free of his own family ”(46) implying that he is sad that he must leave his family behind in order to complete the task. Consequently, for many people this would be a severely negative result to his journey. Even so, during Brent’s journey, he chooses to not visit his family. “He changed buses again in Boston, where he had an aunt and uncle and cousins, none of whom he desired to see. They were his past.” (116). Brent does not want to see any of his rel...
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..., for the greater of him and his world.
Brent has gone on a journey that has majorly influenced his life. It has had many positive, negative, and severely changing effects that will further shape him into a better, stronger, and more independent human being. Brent will continue to be a better version of his ‘old’ suicidal self because of how he has handled and dealt with this task brought upon him. He has changed abundantly from this journey that will continue to have everlasting effects on him. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Brent has shown that he was able to change in order to progress and he has shown that he was able to change himself with time and effort while on a spiritual and mental journey.
Works Cited
Whirligig by Paul Fleishman
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Greenblatt, Stephen, eds. The Norton Anthology English Literature. 9th ed. Crawfordsville: R.R. Donnelley & Sons, 2012. Print.