The Violent Bear it Away: Part I

In starting to read this book I was half expecting to find some fantastic tale about far away lands as in Harry Potter. The other half was expecting to encounter something along the lines of a woman or young girl starting a journey of some sort to find herself. Yet what I came across while reading was something darker and deeper than any of the books that we have read so far. The main character in this book, in my opinion, cannot be read as easily and from time to time cannot be determined if he has made up his own mind or if he’s guided by previous suppositions. At one point during my reading I questioned whether or not the character was even a good person. Yet, when I asked myself this I ventured to try and explain why he had become the way he had. The boy in this story is named Frank even though he goes by the name Tarwater. We encounter him as a young boy of 14 who has had an isolated upbringing and was learned only in the ways his great uncle had taught him. He became comfortable in the way he was and struggled with the mission his great uncle had left him. He was caught in between trying to make his own decisions and attempting to listen to those around him. He reminded me greatly of Harry Potter because of the repression they both grew up in and the closeness in the age gap in which they discover their lives could be different.