She was his other, more exciting self-his way to Terabithia and all the worlds beyond.” As Jess and Leslie’s friendship grows and deepens, it becomes, for Jess, a gateway to “worlds beyond” his own. At the height of their happiness, Jess thinks to himself, “Leslie was more than his friend. Terabithia becomes Jess and Leslie’s escape from the world, and a symbol of their freewheeling friendship. Beyond the creek behind Leslie’s house, they settle down on a patch of forest and name the land Terabithia. Jess and Leslie, teased at school for being so close, decide to create a secret world of their own. Being friends with Leslie changes Jess and opens him up not just to hidden parts of himself, but to the greater hidden magic of the world around him. Their friendship is genuine, unpretentious, and based on mutual trust, respect, and indeed love. When Leslie moves to town, she and Jess become fast friends after a brief, fleeting period of competitiveness.
Jess has a few friends, including the hyper-competitive Gary Fulcher, but generally these friendships are shallow and rooted in taunting, teasing, and besting one another. For the most part, they treat him badly, and he resents them as a result. Though Jess and his impressionable younger sister, May Belle, adore each other, Jess doesn’t have any real, profound connection with his other sisters. At the start of the novel, Jess doesn’t seem to have ever known real friendship and his relationships with his sisters are contentious at best. When Jess and Leslie meet, Jess is dissatisfied with his relationships to several members of his family, and his friendships at school feel strained and performative. Katherine Paterson structures Bridge to Terabithia by building up the central friendship between Jess Aarons and Leslie Burke, two children living in rural Virginia, to demonstrate the ways in which friendship provides one with stability, comfort, refuge, and even identity. Ultimately, Paterson argues that the lessons of intimacy and respect learned within the bounds of friendship-and the gift of seeing oneself through another’s eyes, which any good friendship offers-are the only salve against sorrow and mourning. As the story unfolds, however, Katherine Paterson charts the ways in which the power of friendship can become a kind of roadmap to navigating grief.
The friendship at the heart of Bridge to Terabithia abruptly becomes a source of grief and loss near the end of the novel.
0 kommentar(er)
