Enrique's Journey- Applying the Obstacle to Others

     Hey readers! Just A+_Student_1997 coming to you with another blog. This time we will assess and compare the obstacle that Enrique must face with others who have faced the same. If you will remember from yesterday's blog, I stated that I believed the biggest obstacle to be fear of the unknown.

    This is probably the #1 fear and set back for most of all heroes. In fact, this fear has provoked motivation and risk with, as a result, has created survival and instinct to live. This has another outcome though. A less positive outcome and one that people face.

     In every hero's story there must be a turning point for that hero to have the chance to become something great. This is the point where they much choose: good or evil. Let's look at the classic comic book hero: Batman.

     Alright so as we can see above. Batman is having a hard time deciding if he wants to fight crime or eat cookies. This is not what we are going to analyze but I thought it was a funny gif to make. So, as all comic book/ superhero enthusiasts know, Batman's parents where killed when he was a child. This of course has created that "fear of the unknown" that we talked about. Batman, from this point on, has a choice. Good? Or evil? Does he fight crime and protect others so they don't have to endure the same pain? Or does he stay at home and eat cookies, while wasting all of his parents money?

     This superhero choose the road less traveled by and decided to fight crime. Back to that other outcome. What if Bruce Wayne (Batman's real name -Shh! Don't tell anyone-) had decided to run his parents business and never become the Batman? This is a road that I feel more people choose. The fear of the unknown tends to get to people. And because of that, they become an empty shell.

     We have covered the two polar opposites: springing into action or running away from the unknown. Let's take a look at a story that has a more similar scenario to Enrique's Journey. The book is called The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan.

     In this story, there is a young boy named Perseus Jackson (or Percy Jackson) who fall into the world of Greek mythology thrown into modern day when he finds out that he is the son of Poseidon. When his mother goes missing, along Zeus' famous lightning bolt, Percy, his best friend Grover and a fast thinking daughter of Athena (Annabeth Chase) go on an adventure to retrieve his mother from the underworld and get the lightning bolt back before an all out war between the Gods erupts from the sky down onto Earth. Now this is an example of the third effect that an unknown fear can have on someone. They simply fall into adventure and are forced to go forward. Percy didn't chose who his parents were and as a result he is constantly fighting mythical monsters in modern day.

     Now, how do these things all relate to Enrique's Journey?

     The T-chart above just shows a brief description of each of the stories plot lines and compares them at the same time. As you can see, Enrique's Journey and The Lighting Thief have a lot more to do with one another. But they all deal with the same obstacle: fear of the unknown.

     Now that we know what the obstacle is and we have applied it to other scenarios, next time we will explore how the obstacle was actually overcome in Enrique's Journey.

Thanks for reading! *^-^*

Enrique's Journey - The Obstacle (Fully Analyzed)

      Hey there, just A+_Student_1997 coming to you with my first blog post. By the end of this blog I hope to have up a large variety of multimedia that all relates to the book: Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario. This blog is all about the book and to get the deeper meaning Nazario had to offer her readers.
     Alright, this being my first post I will start with something simple about Enrique's Journey: The Obstacle.
     Imagine you're a single parent with two children (one in school and one that will be starting soon) and in a tight bind for money. You are lost and feel out of touch with reality and as if God himself has abandoned you for no good reason. Then a miracle occurs and you hear that there is work outside of your country. This is, as you may look at it, your only option for you and your children to have a way out of poverty. Unfortunately  you get the bad news that it will only be possible for you to go and you must leave your two children behind with relatives. As a last resort you agree to leave you children behind for them to have a better life.
     Now, flip that and imagine yourself as one of those children. Mother leaves in the morning without even a goodbye. You figure that she just left to go to the market without. Hours pass and she does not return. Hours turns to days, then from days to months. No one seems too concerned about her whereabouts. Then about eight months later, your house gets a call. It is your mother on the other line. She tells you that she loves you very much and that she promises to come home by next Christmas. You ask her where she is, and she answers "America".
     For a child in a country such as Honduras, there are some big differences between Honduras and America. For one, the streets are nothing but dirt trails and you often see people and children as young as five selling things like flowers, old clothes and (in the alleys) drugs. For Enrique it was spices at the age of eight.
     The obstacle comes in around the your mother calls after she has missed Christmas for the fourth time. You begin to not even believe her when she says that she is coming back and your heart aches because you miss her so much. About ten years later, you have decided that enough is enough and that you will travel to America to see her. This is where Enrique's journey truly begins.
     The biggest obstacle that he has to face is not the long distance he must travel, or the fear of being caught by la migra. It is the obstacle of doing this all alone. I feel as though the hardest part of this would be the fact that you have to face this all by yourself. The only thing that can keep you going is will and just when you think you can slow down, a new enemy pops up on the horizon. The big picture obstacle is fear of the unknown. An obstacle that many face.
     But we will get into that next blog. Thanks for reading! *^-^*

The Journey is just Beginning!