Palacio's Kindness

Survival, as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, is the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances. In lay man terms, it is how we act and what we do in order to remain constant in our current state or situation. As children grow into teens their desire to explore the “world” around them increases, coincidently, making the need to survive increase. As students reach middle school, their desires to explore and survive are at an all-time high. Granted survival to most teens is not living with difficult circumstances, in which some cases it is, but surviving the socially acceptable behaviors that are defined by their peers. R.J. Palacio, the author of Wonder, illustrates
Kindness is such a simple thing that so many teens and adults alike have a hard time doing. The desire to be socially accepted sometimes outweighs the pros of being kind to others. In Palacio’s book Wonder, readers are introduced to a character named August Pullman. August is challenged with a facial deformity that causes him to look different than others. He has received many surgeries to fix some of the issues, but because of his surgeries, August has never went to school. At the age of ten his parents decided it was time for August to go to school. They enrolled August into a private academy so that the burden of school would not be a difficult task to handle. August knew going in that students would not be okay with the way he looked, but he took the plunge anyways. August was a smart kid and knew some day he was going to have to face the world. Who would have thought it would have been during prime time middle school. August was “like a lamb to the slaughter” who was struggling to survive middle school. He needed a friend like Christopher who would look past his physical appearance. He was in need of a small act of kindness. Throughout the book, August received many small act of kindness. However, those acts of kindness did not come without a price. See for teens, when they are scared of something or someone they try and make the life of others around them more difficult. In
The many points of view we receive, helps us, as readers, to not judge a specific character by their actions, but the story as a whole. In all three works there is a define line that shows the turning point of despair and struggle to surviving and achieving survival, then victory over fear and the socially acceptable behavior. In Wonder and Shingaling we see how one small act of kindness that August received affected the life of Charlotte who was not focused on the boy drama. However, as the acts of kindness picked up for August and his life began to change so did the life of Charlotte as well as everyone else. Coincidently, in The Julian Chapter, as the acts of kindness picked up the more Julian’s life began to fall apart. This goes to show how one small act of kindness in middle school was the key to surviving and achieving change over the once socially accepted