Whiiligig

Positive and Negative Consequences
Each and everyday we make mistakes. Some mistakes are more severe than others, and come with multiple amounts of consequences. Often in life a lot of us tend to see more negatives than positives. We tend to only see the negative of our mistakes, because we notice that a lot of times they hurt people around us. As we go on in life we can begin to learn that not all mistakes have to be negative, and not all consequences have to be negative. It‘s more how we act on those consequences that make them positive. We do have the power over our own destiny. In the book Whirligig by Paul Fleischman, the main-character Brent learns through a hard experience that not all mistakes and consequences have to be negative. He learns you can make the worst mistake you have ever made, and turn in into something more positive. After Brent killed another teenager driving drunk during his attempt at suicide he only saw the negative aspects of his decision. He had to live with the guilt of taking life of someone else, but on an unusual consequence of traveling cross country to build whirligigs he realized that “consequences reach into places that we can’t see” (38).
Before receiving the unusual punishment of building whirligigs Brent desperately wanted a punishment. He felt much remorse for his actions, and “he wanted to do something for the family” (38). He was set on a long journey with only a handy whirligig book to guide him through. Brent was stuck a lot of the time with only him, his book, and his thoughts. He wasn’t about to tell anyone what he was doing, and made sure he was building his whirligigs in private. The building of his first whirligig didn’t go very smoothly. “He cut his hand three different times and suspected that part of him wasn’t with the labors he’d been assigned and longed to mete one more punishment” (52). Brent longed for something that could make up for his mistake. He knew that he had done wrong, and feels stuck between a...