Knowing Our World

Author’s Note: Writing this was  not the easiest thing for me to do but I felt like I needed to let it in, and then let it out. This is a reminder of what happens in our so called, ordinary world.

Crazy, inhumane, dreadful, careless, these are just a fraction of the words that would describe our world. One thing for sure is that human beings really are interesting creatures, we steal, kill, hit, and many other things to each other. Of course there are more people who are still in their right mind, but even just one person who does these things is too much, and there are countless people who are doing these things every day. There are bad things in the world that we cannot afford to miss out on helping out.

One morning I came from school and noticed that the living room TV was on the news channel and I did not like what I saw. There was people running, screaming, people were hurt and the news reporters said that there was two bombs that went off during a marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, a proud day for Americans. I was just shocked as I watched two bombs go off on TV, where there were people cheering on the runners for one moment then everything turns into chaos in another. As time went by slowly, I watched as the number hurt keeped increasing. I looked on CNN and I found that the number hurt was at over 140 people total and only three were killed (CNN). There are bad things in the world that we cannot afford to miss out on helping out.

Now, the bombing was one of the worst thing that happened for the year, but there are more bad things, for instance there were three girls that got kidnapped ten years ago and just got found. This rescue happened because one of the girls hailed a neighbor and called 911 (The Washington Post). This completely came out of nowhere for me and I feel absolutely sorry for these poor girls. One of the young ladies was severely beaten and needs face reconstruction. She won’t have contact with her family because she was on the list as a runaway and they took her off the list, in other words they gave up on her. I don’t know what is worse, getting beaten for ten years or know that you were givin up upon your own family. I, on the other hand, would never give up looking if there wasn’t undeniable proof of my friend’s or children’s death.

I really didn’t even want to mention Human Trafficking, but I think that it is necessary since it is a very important problem in our world. As I mentioned before that the girls got kidnapped well that was an example of human trafficking. There are more people in slavery now than there ever has been in human history (ywca), which I had a hard time believing that, but I guess it would make sense with the increased population over the years.

All this and much more happens every day, every hour, every second. There is the saying that states, “Every second there is a child born.”. Which is true but another saying that is true is, “Every second somebody dies.”. No matter what the cause is it really matters that we know that these things happen and we must do everything we can to help, whether it is praying for them, or giving some money to a fund for them, for the people who have lost close ones, and who have almost lost their lives.

Bibliography:

• "3 killed, more than 140 hurt in Boston Marathon bombing – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs." This Just In - CNN.com Blogs. N.p., 15 Apr. 2013. Web. 30 May 2013. <http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/15/explosions-near-finish-of-boston-marathon/>.
• Roig-Franzia, Manuel, and Jerry Markon. "3 missing women rescued from Cleveland home; questions raised over police visits - Washington Post." Featured Articles From The Washington Post. N.p., 14 May 2013. Web. 30 May 2013. <http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-07/national/39076467_1_rescue-neighbors-women>.
• "YWCA of Silicon Valley - 10 Surprising Facts About Human Trafficking." YWCA Silicon Valley. N.p., 11 Mar. 2013. Web. 30 May 2013. <http://ywca-sv.org/programs/HT/ten-human-trafficking-facts.php>.

Trail Of Tears Part Two

Author's Note: With this second part of my story I have tried to put more dialog in here with people talking to each other.

Part Two

The trip to the rest of our lives started with a slow and depressing walk. Some of the children were still cry but noting along with some mothers. Anusha was crying on my shoulder and it was hard for me to keep from crying along with her. I knew I had to be brave for her so that I wouldn’t make the situation even worse. Plus I had a reputation I had to keep with my family and my tribe, showing fear is something I try to stay away from, to be brave for my tribe if the day comes that I will lead my people. That day will probably never happen since I am a woman and only men can go to war and be leaders. I’m lucky enough that I get to hunt but that will soon end, I’m sure of it since we will need a lot of woman when we get to the new land to organize everything up along with getting everything situated. Adahy was used to having a good amount of game on his back so having some blankets and soft stuff actually felt good on his back I bet. Sooner or later Laila or Anusha will want to have a ride on him when their feet get tired, possibly even mother. It is weird when they ask me to ride Adahy since it is partially our families horse but they know Adahy and me have a special bond that will never break. He won’t let anyone else ride him unless I give him the “okay” sign, which is either helping the person on him, which is pretty obvious, or basically just telling him it’s okay. Just as I was saying, here goes Anusha.

“Aruna can I please ride Adahy please? I really don’t want to walk next to those creepy men.”

I completely understood what she meant, those men were dressed strangely with huge long guns. I felt both safe to be protected by those guns and also unsafe and completely uncomfortable since I’m sure those guns were used against my people, possibly one of them is the killer of my father. Either way I much rather a bow since it is better in every way. It reloads faster, easier to carry, and just looks cooler. Though I do admit that I wish I had the chance to fire the gun at least once, the white men would get a taste of their own medicine, or guns. Finally we halt for a second and I push her up upon Adahy, where I know she is now safe. If anybody tries to hurt her then I can simply send Adahy to charge off until he finds one of our sister tribes.

Dawn came by the time we have gotten deep into the forest from walking on trails that cut straight through the forest which made the trip much easier.

“Okay, it’s time to stop for the night.” The leader states.

Everybody stops and prepares to unsettle for the night. I take Anusha off Adahy and look for a nice, soft place to sleep. Mother carried Laila asleep in her arms, laid her onto a tree, pulled a blanket off of Adahy and put her to sleep. Everybody started to do the same and after about a half hour everybody was comfy and ready to fall asleep. I, on the other hand, stayed up and watched as the white men gathered around a fire not too far away from us, drinking, smoking, and I have to say that I have never smelled something that almost made me throw up, except for bad meat, but the thing that really bothered me was that these were the men that fought and won against my kin. All they were doing was laughing and getting drunk enough to stumble to the ground when trying to walk. Finally, sleep caught up with me and put me into a dreamless sleep.

I felt something sniffing me, a very soft nose and at first I thought that it was a wolf, about to eat my face when I stood straight up and took out my knife that was strapped to my side. Then I see Adahy staring at me and stepped back when I jumped up and startled her, she eyes my knife and backs away, he was always a smart horse. Wondering why he woke me up I looked around and saw that all the white men were loading up their guns. Now I was very thankful for Adahy, because they might think that we are all asleep and they are just going to execute us in our sleep, as I suspected and so did he.

“Thanks boy, I owe you a tree of apples.” I whisper loud enough just for him to hear.

Instead of killing us they start going to different families, careful not to get too close incase they stab them or something, and told them to get packing. One soldier came over to us and gave us the same instructions. We began to pack everything up when another soldier comes over to talk to my mother.

“I am afraid that we are going to have to take your horse, orders from the General that if there are any valuable horses that we have to take them.”

Hearing this made my heart skip three beats and before I knew it, I was holding onto Adahy with my life and started to yell at the soldier with great fear in my heart. The soldier was startled by the yelling coming from a little girl.

“NO, you can’t just take my horse away! He belongs to me and only me! My father left me Adahy and I refuse to give him away to the very people who killed him!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

“There is nothing that I can do, your horse is too strong to just ignore and leave in the hands of a peasant.” He says with a smirk.

The very second I heard him call me a “peasant”, I lost all of my anger and before I could stop myself I kicked the man's leg so he would be level to me and was shocked by my surprising strength. I slap him across the face so hard that my hand felt a painful shock go throughout my arm and fell to the ground covering his face, while I tried to get feeling back into my hand.

“Aruna stop!! You're just going to make things worse!” My mother cries while holding my sisters. They had plain shock on their face and started to cry when they thought about what the man would do back to me.

“You little...” He trails off while he slaps me back and I land face down on the ground crying from the agonizing pain.

My family just sits there, not being able to move and neither could I. Waiting for what might come next I turn and look at the soldier who now held a gun up to Adahay’s head. Somehow I find even more strength and began to get up and start charging after the man when two other men stop me by grabbing my arms and pushing me back to the ground.

“Stubborn little brat, pull her back up so I can punish her, she needs to learn who is the boss around here.”

The soldiers get me on my knees and I look into the eyes of my mother and sisters whose eyes were filled with fear. They were also being held by soldiers to make sure that they see the punishment.

“Now, everybody watch so that the next time somebody decides to give me disrespect that the punishment will be even worse, she is lucky that I am going easy on her and that I am going to end her pain fast but I will not do the same for anyone else.” The soldier says making sure each and every one of my kin were watching and listening.

Everything started to slow down, watching the man take his gun and give me the most devilish smile, I didn’t want anyone to watch so kept all of my tears behind my eyes and gave the soldier a strong, hard stare, looking deep into his eyes, looking into his soul and saw nothing but complete anger. He took his gun, flipped it so that the handle was showing and hit me hard on the head, before I could even flinch everything turns to black and the world goes quiet.

End Of Part Two

Fitness & Health

Author's Note: This is my essay that I had to write for gym and I thought that it would be a good piece since there are some good uses of punctuation in here.

I feel very good about myself when gym is over; I try to use my very best effort in everything that we do, yet I know that there are people who really don’t like gym because they think that it is hard. Even though I agree with this, I feel physical activity really is a good thing. I don’t understand the people that hate gym class because I really do love it. Most of the time we get to play fun sports that I can never play anywhere else.

Now,I know that a reason a lot of people don’t like gym is because that it is tiring and they basically don’t like to exercise, however I believe that gym is the only reason that I am not too much over weight and the same goes for almost everybody else in school. Sure, some people do sports, but for those who don’t want to participate in a sport or can’t, they are lucky to have physical education class, otherwise we could all be overweight and lazy. I know that every time gym is over I have a really good feeling about myself because I tried. Everything is planned out and organized. We will work on endurance, strength, then speed, and we play games that go along with all of these skills. Gym isn’t all about just getting into shape because it also helps me socially. My friends and I have become closer with having to learn how to work together to successfully accomplish the task given us. For example when we play capture the kettlebell we tell each other to watch different parts of the gym or try to save each other from jail.

As I said before, a lot of people dislike gym class, not realizing that it does so much to prepare them for their future socially as well as, physically. We are more unlikely to have back problems when we practice doing sit ups because basically our bones are going to feel a lot stronger when we get older. If we didn’t exercise or do any type of stretches, then our bones and muscles would ache  and we would be very weak and unhealthy. Of course, some people do have trouble in gym because they have asthma, like I do, or are already overweight and have a much harder time. I remember I used to run like a horse, but then in fifth grade I got pneumonia and my lungs were damaged. Now, I have trouble breathing just after a short sprint or jog, but I have gotten better in the last two years. This improvement is seen in the goals we set for ourselves in class. Also, I am a little overweight  although I have lost a little and I realize it is the result of the physical activity I use in phy ed class.

I don’t know what I would do without gym. It gives me a chance to go outdoors and play sports and just basically have fun with my friends. I feel sorry for those people who hate gym and I will never understand why they feel that way. Plus it is the only class that I can forget about everything else that is happening outside of class, whether I have an essay due or a presentation due next class, in gym I release all the stress I have within the activities we do.. Sure doing the mile and the pacer isn’t all that great, but I like it because every year we get to see how much more stronger and faster we grow throughout the school year.

Civil War Child Labor

Author’s Note: This story is mostly me trying to use subordinating conjunctions, include a few expressive words and the correct punctuation of fanboys.

We know that at this time kids aren’t allowed to work unless your parents own a business or if it’s just a little job like a paper boy. Well, back during the Civil War the north had lots of factories but not enough workers to keep those factories running. So the owners decided to make kids work in the factories since they have lots of energy and there are plenty of kids to choose from.

In this photo you see that there are young boys working in a factory. It is the last place that you would want your kid to work or even where you would want to work.  I’m not entirely sure what their job is, but  in the website it said that it was a glass factory and you can see some bottles to the left. The working conditions are just horrible. There is metal hanging everywhere; I bet some of those things are moving and the worst part is that there are kids in there when they could easily get hurt by cut by glass or getting a limb ripped off. A good example is the guy who has holes in his shirt probably from glass and probably got a good cut from that. In fact he even looks petrified from working there along with a few of the others and I wouldn’t blame him. The grown-ups in the back don’t even care about the kids and probably aren’t even trying to help, they are telling them where things go and what they have to do and if someone died they would just take the next guy in line instead of stopping production and figuring out what caused the person’s death. This is not a good job or safe environment for these kids and teenagers.

In addition it also looks like they don’t have that much room, so it would be very easy for them to get diseased from germs or maybe even become claustrophobic in those small areas. Almost all of these kids are stuck doing this for a good amount of their life, not going to school, not learning how to write, read, which just makes their lives even worse because they won’t get a good job later in the future and not live a happy life.

Their family must be pretty poor to let their kids work here or they are homeless and have no choice but to work and ended up here, trapped here for the rest of their lives. Anyone can guess what it is they are thinking. “Man I can’t wait to get out of here” or “Oh no, not that machine again”. That’s just their basic thoughts, what they feel is sorrow, depressed, tired, hurt, no hope, and no life. I believe that some of them may have committed or considered suicide. How their parents feel is probably terrified, wondering if their child will make it back each day from work. They feel ashamed for having their children work for them just to get a bite and a drink to stay alive. Therefore this is a life that no one wants and no one deserves.

This reminds me of the story The Circuit where a family is forced to work all year long, picking crops all day every day. The kids were not allowed to go to school unless there was no more crops to pick which is only for a little while. Picking crops was something this family was stuck doing for the rest of their lives. This was many families fate, too many if you ask me.

Trail Of Tears

Author's Note: I decided that it was time for me to write a story with a little bit of dialog which is something I usually have trouble with so I'm trying it this one time.

Part 1

My name is Aruna, which stands for dawn or the sunrise. I was named that because I was born during the sunrise. I live in the Cherokee tribe in a place that is called Tennessee by the white men. I’m fourteen years-old and because my papa died with some other soldiers trying to protect our land, I had to learn how to hunt, skin, fish, cook, clean, do any chores all in one day. Luckily I have two younger sisters, seven and eight year-olds, Anusha and Laila, who helps our mom with the cooking and cleaning and getting things done. I have to say that Anusha has these beautiful colored eyes with green and possibly yellow in there, it is very unusual for my people to get this so she is very unique to everyone, including me. Before my papa died he taught me how to hunt for deer and fish for my family, and even tried took me to watch him try to kill a bear and it was a bad experience. Only the best hunters are able to kill a black bear and so far that was only one hunter. Black Coat, the leader of our tribe was the strongest of all. He had the strength of a bear and a spirit like an untamed horse. Pretty easy to guess how he got his name. Black Coat is my role model, I want to be just like him and someday kill my own black bear. He said that he knew when the time was right that the bear spirit was telling him to take a step up and become a leader and by doing that, he had to kill the famous black bear. Yes we are aware that there are other bears, but the black bear is the most common bear near us and the most strongest we have encountered. Other tribes laugh at us since we have no grizzly bears and they are the most ferocious, but for us the black bears are more wild against our tribe. Whereas I believe the spirit of the black bear is mad at us so they make them more intimidated to kill us.

My parents knew from the beginning that I was less feminine than most girls since for my eighth birthday all I wanted was my own bow, carved with the most dangerous animals. You see every boy or girl's bow will have carvings showing how high ranked of a hunter you are. You’re papa is supposed to take their child hunting for the first time after they get their bow and climb to the top of a mountain not too far from our village and jump off the edge into a hay stack safely to earn the carving of the eagle to represent the skill of climbing and soaring like the eagle. Most girls are too scared to even look at the mountain and so I was the first girl after ten years to do so. After this there are many other challenges for instance the antler carving for getting your first deer, a feather for getting your first bird which is a pretty hard one but I got it in time. The second to last one is carving a claw from killing a cougar which are extremely dangerous. You have to be at least fifteen to be able to do so and you have to be supervised by two other hunters to be safe, and to have witnesses, and last but not least is of course the carving of the bear print from killing a black bear. Of course you have the ability to carve whatever else you want like the sun or moon or some plant but not any animals you didn’t kill. Since my papa died I have not been able to do any more challenges and after the fight the white men took all of the soldiers away for about three weeks now, so I couldn’t have one of my papa’s friends help me. Just so you know they don’t really help their kids they just give them advice and tell them what they might be doing wrong, the fathers are not allowed to actually help kill the animals otherwise that is cheating and is not a true kill. I’ve been hunting small animals like rabbits, and beavers and only deer if we run out of food completely or the deer is not as big and close to the village s it doesn’t get wrecked from being dragged on rocks and dirt. Lucky for me I have my dad’s horse, Adahy, to help me carry my game. He has a black coat that shines when the sunlight is beaming down, he is known to be the strongest, fastest horse of the whole Cherokee tribe. You can feel the Earth beneath your feet tremble each time he takes a step, he scares any animal that crosses his path with a loud roar that sounds like thunder and vibrates throughout the forest.

One day I woke up in my family tipi hearing a lot of screaming coming from outside. It wasn’t sad or scared screaming but, happy, tear flowing screaming. I figured that the men had finally returned. I wasn’t as excited as I wish I was but most of those screaming was little kids happy to see their father. My sisters and I with some other families who had lost their fathers are not the happy cheering people. Of course we were happy that they had returned but it’s not the same because our fathers will never return. When I came outside I saw that the men were happy to see their families but they also had a very sad and worried expression spread across their face. Black Coat didn’t even look at anybody but instead told everyone to come into the meeting house for some bad news. It’s not usually when we ever go into the meeting house so this means that something big is going to happen, I bet something to do with the white men. The whole tribe fits in and Black Coat begins to explain.

“Ever since the white men came they wanted to take our land, we fought them off many times and lost too much for too little. It is clear now that the white men are not going to stop until they get all of our land. As we know many tribes such as Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes have gave up their land to move down to Indian territory. I am sorry to say that we are now amongst those tribes. The white men are coming tomorrow at dawn and will walk us down to Indian territory”.

Everyone was extremely shocked. Mothers and kids started crying and a few of the woman started yelling, “Why don’t we just fight them off? We are supposed to guard this land with our lives”.

Hearing this, the man next to her said,” There were way too many of them, their numbers increased tremendously so we wouldn’t have the slightest chance. We are lucky they are giving us a home rather than just disposing us”.

I have to say I was with the woman at first but what the man said was also true, that we have a chance of at least living another day. Everyone stepped out but Black Coat who just took a seat on the ground and looked deeply into the fire. He glanced at me and for the first time I looked straight in his eyes and I could have sworn I saw that he was scared. Back in my tipi I started to pack my things which wasn’t much, all I had was three sets of clothes and a blanket. I wanted my bow and hunting knife because I wanted my last time here to be in the woods and hunt.

The day passes and now it was the time for the white men to come. Everything was packed, our homes, our remainders of food, everything had to b carried either horseback, or on our backs. Adahy carried pretty much the blankets, clothes, and the food I gathered the day before with some vegetables. Seeing the white men was a horrid sight for most of the tribe, but for some odd reason when finally got to see them up close they looked very strong, proud, and ready for an attack that might happen any moment. I wasn’t scared of them until the leader of the soldier comes up to us on his horse and tells us where we are headed. He takes a low breath staring at us and begins talking.

“Today we are here to escort you to Indian territory. To do this we will have to travel through Tennessee, to Kentucky, to Illinois, to Missouri, to finally reach our destination to Indian territory. 100,00 American Indians are also on their way and we might bump into them since the roads will soon connect. I would just like to thank you all for selling us your beautiful land, it will work well with growing cotton and tobacco along with farmland for the settlers that they are just dying for. The road will be very hard to travel and many of you will die from sickness, starvation, possibly suicide, or trying to kill our soldiers then you will have to pay a death sentence. Since Indian territory is a long ways away it will take possibly a year to travel there, 1838 through 1839. By 1840 you should be settled nicely in you new homeland and will be able to go back to your normal lives,” he says with a smirk.

Even though he said that, I don’t think that our lives will ever be normal again. Most people in the tribe knew that they are going to try and teach us to live civilized, to make the children go to school and wear their clothing. One thing that drives me nuts is that the ladies can’t show off their legs but their dress at the top going so low and shows a little too much, and they yell at us for barely wearing any clothes! Just another thing that makes them very different to us. They said that we are allowed to have weapons on us as long as we don’t try to kill them or they will tell us that we can hunt when they tell us to and we have to be supervised. Once they were done telling us the rules it was finally the time to start making our way down to our new home. Many will die, so I am going to try my best to make sure that I keep my family safe as would my father. 

End Of Part One

How I Love New York

Author's Note: For my creative piece I decided to just do a little story about when I went to New York and kind of describe what it looked like during Christmas and what I did there.

I'm not a person that goes on vacation a lot and the only places I have been to are Las Vegas and New York. It is kind of what you call a family tradition for us to go to Wisconsin Dells yet nothing interesting really ever happens there. New York has a much better story. When I was in New York, it was during Christmas which made New York was the most extravagant site I have ever seen. Everything was perfect, there was maybe two inches of snow which gave the city a wonderful coat of white and at night when all the Christmas lights were on, it was like the whole city was flooded with colors of yellow, green, red, and blue. There were huge lit up snowflake decorations that put a wonderful shade of blue light that bounced off each building window surrounding them. The best part was the biggest tree that was decorated so beautifully it stung my eyes it was so well lit up. I have never been in such a magical place, and I got to do and see some pretty neat things.

Even though seeing the city was a great experience there was a few things we didn’t get to do, for instance we were going to go to the top of the Empire State Building, but we didn’t have enough time and it was really busy. One thing that really got me upset was that there was a birthday dinner for my mom that I was never told about. We were just sitting in a restaurant and then POP! The workers just do a little surprise celebration with confetti and singing happy birthday and I was literally even more surprised than my mother. I held a grudge for the remaining time we were there and I still am.

The rest of it was nice, we got to get a ride in a carriage with a big, white, stinky clydesdale that smelled as if it hasn’t been washed for over a month. This kind of reminds me of that Seinfeld show when the guy gives his horse some bread and it gets all gasey. After circling Central Park I never hated a horse ride before in my life and I love horses. We walked on the Brooklyn Bridge and I saw the magnificent statue of Liberty in the distance. With the sun gazing down upon her making the water beneath her sparkle, I thought to myself that that was the biggest, proudest looking statue I have ever seen, even though it is the first and only statue I have ever seen. I also remember seeing the remains of the twin towers. The places that they were in were cut off by huge plastic covered fences. It made it look unbelievably depressing. One thing that I will never forget is the amazing pizza they have there; it was the most delicious pizza I have ever encountered and I would definitely go there again just for one more slice. Hopefully I get the honor to go there again to have some more fresh memories and fresh pizza.

Patriot or Loyalist

Author's Note: This book was a hard choice to figure out the point of view but I pretty much explain how the story would be told from other people in the book and explain what Tim's point of view is on the Revolutionary War.

In the book My Brother Sam Is Dead by Christopher Collier ,Tim is a young boy who lives in Redding, Connecticut and his family are loyalists. His father is a man who think’s the war is just a stupid, pointless act against the king, while Sam,Tim’s older brother, is in college, but snuck away with some other men to join the Continental Army. So Tim’s father is not happy with Sam because he thinks that it’s God’s rule that men are supposed to be loyal to their king. Their mother is a loyalist but doesn’t care much of what Sam is doing she doesn’t want any part of it. The author is showing that Tim is not the bad guy here that he is just trying to get a good perspective of things, while Tim is pretty much in the middle of it all because he wants to obey his father but when he looks at same he thinks that he is the most intelligent and proud man especially when he came home with his Continental Army suit. Sam steals the family musket and takes off to join the cause while Tim is forced to become a man and help out with their farm and tavern. The father gets kidnapped and killed on a British ship so Tim was the man. Sam comes home because his team is resting in Redding and Sam gets executed by being accused of stealing his own cattle.

Tim doesn’t really pick a side of either loyalist or patriot because of how he was grown up with loyalists and seeing British troops do something horrible to the patriots. If Tim was just a loyalist then the story would have been how horrible the patriot’s are and if he was a patriot it would be the other way around. Having being able to see both sides was a good experience for him not just listening to Sam or their father. Therefore Tim’s point of view is that the war is just something that should have never happened or that there should be another way for the patriots to get their freedom.

Of course if the author didn’t tell the story from Tim’s point of view then the whole story would have changed. Take Sam for instance, if the story was told from his point of view then the story would just be about him in the war and actually that sounds pretty good. If the author did another book that takes place as Sam in the war, his point of view would all just be him in the war and how he thinks fighting for independence is worth dying for, which it is. Now it would be the same for author if he chose someone else's point of view. For most of the people who lived in Redding they were loyalists so the point of view from anyone in the town would be all about how great of a king king George is and how Sam is such a good almost grown up man and how smart and strong he is but that he is a traitor of the king and he should be banished from Redding or executed.

It is important that a great author has a well understood point of view and that the reader can find and understand it. The point of view for Tim is that he is in the middle of war and he is just trying to keep his mother safe, keep out of trouble, and to keep the tavern running to stay in business. His point of view will change a bit throughout the book but in the end his point of view is pretty clear that Tim was a  more of a pacifist.