My Literary Essay

Keep Fighting

By Tom

Lets face it, in life, we’re held back by something at some point. Weather it’s something physical like a sibling or bully or something emotional or internal like not being able to explore your passions, we’ve all been through it at some point or another. But just like Paul in Tangerine by Edward Bloor, we have to learn to not give up and keep fighting no matter what happens.

In Tangerine by Edward Bloor, Paul Fisher, a legally blind, seventh grade boy, wants to play goalkeeper on his new school’s soccer team. However, even though he can see just fine with his thick glasses or goggles on and can play goalkeeper very well, the coach says he cannot join the team because he is said to be “legally blind.” So after a while of being at this new school and not being allowed to play on the school soccer team, a sinkhole occurs at his school and damages a lot of classrooms, and the school was no longer a good learning environment, so he went to a different school where he felt like he fit in more and was able to join their school team since they didn’t know about his “legal blindness.” Then they win the soccer tournament, and Paul felt like he finally belonged, but later in the book, you learn more about Paul’s life, Paul’s brother, Erik, and the horrible reason behind why Paul’s blind.

One of the characters who dealt with being held back by something was Paul. As I said before, Paul was considered legally blind, so when he tried out for his school’s soccer team, they told him he couldn’t participate. At first, it looked as if he was going to give up on soccer. He was depressed and didn’t seem like himself. However, when the sinkhole occurred at his school, he suddenly started searching for a way to get back into soccer. He joined a new school called Tangerine Middle School where he was able to pick himself back up and continue his love of soccer. You can really see how much making that decision benefited him from this this quote on page 105: “Things actually seem to be going my way. Finally. It’s the Paul Fisher Soccer Dream.” This is important because his family’s life seemed to revolve around his brother, Erik’s football dream and because of this, there was no room for Paul who didn’t get as much attention from his parents, but since he moved to Tangerine Middle School, he decided to turn over a new leaf and start the Paul Fisher Soccer Dream. This shows that if you just give up after something doesn’t go your way, then you’ll never accomplish anything because at some point in your life, you will have a problem that occurs in a situation. If Paul had just given up on soccer, his story wouldn’t have been as inspiring as it was.

Also, Paul had to deal with a person who was holding him back: his big brother, Erik. Erik, the star of his football team, constantly harasses Paul, and Paul has no choice but to fear him and to try and avoid him as much as he can. Because of this Paul can no longer stand up for himself and whenever Erik does something bad (And he does a lot of bad things…) Paul is too afraid and too held back by Erik to do anything about it. For a long time in the book, it looked as if Erik was going to rule his life forever, but after Erik does another one of his bad choices, Paul has a moment of reflection and tells himself that he won’t let Erik rule his life anymore. Soon after that reflection, Paul stands up to Erik, and on page 261, he says, I’m not afraid of you, Erik. Come on.” Finally after years of emotional torment, Paul didn’t give up. While reading the book, it’s really cool to see how much development occurred during this situation between Paul and Erik. You see how after every bad thing Erik does, Paul’s confidence starts to rise. He starts feeling stronger and soon is able to overcome the torment that had affected him for years. This shows that even in a situation that seems helpless, you have to keep trying to solve the problem, and at some point, the problem will be solved.   

To conclude, I think it’s obvious that if you don’t give up no matter what’s holding you back, you can become a better person. Although multiple problems were coming at Paul all at once, he took control of the situation and became a more confident person so that he could overcome his problems. In this way, Paul serves as a mentor to all of us. We need to be like him so that the next time something is holding us back, we can remember Paul’s lesson of confidence and the ability to never give up.

My favorite part about reading Tangerine was how we did it with a book club. I enjoyed being part of a book club because I liked having group discussions. It was a way to help me talk about what I was thinking while reading, and it gave me a chance to interact with friends.

I have grown as a writer in many ways. For example, I think my evidence is becoming pretty strong, and I feel stronger to apply new skills to my evidence as well. One challenge that I faced while writing this was the summary. I didn't really know what was important enough to add to the summary since there are a lot of important parts in Tangerine. However, I surprised myself by finally coming up with a summary that I thought was pretty good. Some feedback that I received that helped me was from my friend about finding inspiring quotes.