The Red Headed Hawaiian Essay

“Sometimes it’s better to be different” is a big take away from the book because it shows that beginning original is a good thing. “The Red-Headed Hawaiian” by Chris Mckinley and Rudy Puana is about life lessons and how hard work and dedication pays off and can get you anywhere. It is also about a redheaded boy from Kahalu’u, Oahu that was dealt with many difficulties as a child but later in life achieved in life. It reveals that people usually give up but if they work hard and are persistent, it can get them many things. Rudy makes achievements and sacrifices to maintain his life in order to achieve his goals. In the beginning of the book, Rudy is bullied in school for his skin color and his hair because it was different from everyone else. In that time it was harder for him to focus and get good grades. In the foreword it says, “Kids teasing me by singing Rudy the Red-headed-human durings the holidays.” Rudy gets Hawaiian from both his parents however, his mother is fair skinned with dirty blonde hair. It must have been hard to hear those kinds of means things as a child growing up. Doubtfully as well, he
also had lung problems. In this section of the book, it's the beginning so Rudy doesn't know yet that it's going to take a lot of dedication to studying to become what he wants. Towards the next part of the book, Rudy has bad grades and realizes he needs to change. Some of his friends would tell him he wouldn't become anything and would just be dumb. He wanted to change that so in the chapter 2 powerpoint presentation it says, “Rudy starts to act like the smart kids in his classes… Slowly, but surely his grades start to improve.” He wanted to change his attitude towards school so he started to do what the “smart kids” would do like study, eat well, and sleep good. With all this new influence Rudy wanted to become a Doctor now. However, once he needed to go into college, his family had to pay for some of the tuition. In the chapter 3 powerpoint presentation it says, “So one of the main conflicts were his family struggling for money and finding a school for him.” There’s not many schools that have a cheap tuition so it was probably easier for him and his family for him to go to UH Manoa. In closing, Rudy had a rough start in his education but realized he wanted to be more than nothing so he worked hard so that he could pursue his dreams. Now coming to the end of the book, he’s in college with deprivation of sleep and reality just so he can get the grades and scores he needs.
Rudy is doing all these things because he was now determined to become a Doctor. He’s graduated from UH Manoa and is now going on to Texas University for Medical school. In Chapter 5 page 123 it says, “Spent sleepless nights studying.” He did have to make sacrifices in order to stay focused on what he doing. Rudy never gave up until he became a MD. Later on became a dark time for him because so many deaths were happening and he was the one who usually “pulled the plug.” He eventually was able to look past it but was in need of a vacation so him and his wife Lynn went to Hilo. After his trip it helped to remind him of what home is like with the greenery and “country” life resulting a detox from mainland
things. In conclusion, through everything had to deal with from being teased at school for his red hair to economic issues to turning bad grades into good grades is why hard work and determination is a major influence in Rudy’s life. In a more broader spectrum of how those things impacted and shaped Rudy’s life, it shows that even going to a rough part in life there's always going to be a award from persistence and hard work and Rudy got his from being a boy who barely graduated from high school to becoming one of the youngest associate directors in MD Anderson history.