Growing Up-The Body reading Journal

     Growing up is something that we all have to face, sooner or later. In the process, we go through many special experiences or perhaps tests that changes our view point of the world. It could be facing up to your parents, teachers or maybe facing up to yourself and in “The Body” written by Stephen King, we can find all of these in the adventure that the protagonists take. 

     Gordie is the narrator who tells the story of himself and three other children--Chris, Vern, and Teddy. For Gordie, the whole story is, quite literally, writing about writing as a writer. Like he says in the beginning however, “The most important things are the hardest things to say,” and “The Body,” deals with some of the most sensitive moments in Gordie’s childhood. Gordie, who was the second child in the family was treated like a child that never existed. Even while his big brother lived, he was never the center of attention from his parents. Then, when his big brother died from an accident, his parents fell and became, “too fucked up” to take care of Gordie. 

     From Gordie’s view, the death of his brother was more of a dream. In his stories, and dreams, his brother often came out to Gordie as if he were still alive. Gordie was afraid that maybe it should have been himself who died instead of his brother. In his imagination his brother still talked and walked around. This was why seeing the body and facing death in reality meant much more to Gordie. He later realizes that when you die, you can’t and shouldn’t do anything and finally comes to really accept the death of his brother. In a way, Gordie becomes more matured than his parents who never learns this lesson, that one “can’t, don’t won’t never, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t,” do anything anymore. 

     Chris Chambers is also another twelve year old child. Unlike Gordie, who is from a middle class family in Castle Rock, he comes from a family of very low reputation. Because of this, he is also expected to live up to his reputation as a Chamber. However, he struggles to get out the the town and the reputation of his family. In the end, he really does escape the town with the help of Gordie. The rest of the little gang, Teddy and Vern are rather neglected in the story. For them, the adventure was their first “big” thing. But from my view, it seems that that was just about it for them. Teddy and Vern, unlike Gordie and Chris, didn’t change much even after the adventure and maybe thats why they became one of those friends that you just pass by in the hallway. 

     The writer who is writing about a writer writing about writing--that would be me--also experienced growing up. It was more of a series of changes that accumulated to my maturing in my case, and I’m still in the process. Like in the reflection essay that I wrote on my blog, I was faced up against myself. The task was speaking out. Well, I’m not really sure how its turning out, will I succeed in my metamorphosis like Chris and Gordie? Or will I stay the same like Teddy and Vern? Time will tell, but in the mean time I would like to recommend “The Body,” for the ones who are facing their own tasks in growing up. 

(Reflective Essay) Speaking Out

     Ten years ago, around this time of the year, I had my very first flight--on an airplane of course.

Even at that age, I sort of understood the concept of having a jet lag after a long travel like the one I took which was from Korea to the States. The jet lag, however, itself didn’t seem to affect me much at that time. It may have been because I was young, or maybe because of the extensive sleep that I took on the plane. Anyways, I was all hyper and energetic when I got off the plane at Washington D.C. But now that I think of it, I think I experienced the jet lag more than anyone else, not physically, but in my confidence. 

     The language barrier was much higher than I thought. For the first two months or so I barely spoke a word in English. In the month after that, I was barely able to construct a complete sentence. The rest of the two years that I lived in the States, I was a quite boy. I became quite fluent in the end actually, but still I wasn’t the type that really fit the word “loquacious”. 

     When I came back to Korea, I had to face the language barrier again--ironic isn’t it? I could speak in Korean(people tend to remember their mother tongue for quite a long time). I couldn’t write though. I could write just a little bit more than the foreign teachers who’ve been living in Korea for some years. A bigger problem, however, was the words and language that the other children were using. It was really hard for me to understand the games they were playing or the catchy phrases that were uncatchable for me. Every now and then when I look at the photos I took as a second grader, which was when I just came back from the States, I feel once again that I’ve changed, a lot. 

     My middle school years were an extension of the elementary school years. I kept on reading fantasy novels and so on. Around that time I think I really enjoyed reading the “House of Scorpions”. I fooled around and made jokes with my close friends, but for the majority, I was still the quite kid. One interesting change that happened to me around my second year in middle school was in my writing style. I’m not sure if it’s a good example, but here is one of the things I wrote as a middle schooler--quite “organic”, really. 

     “Being free of harmful substances is also a reason why organic foods are becoming the new trend. There is a huge issue going on with the melanin inside foods. As it is known it is known to cause diseases. These harmful matters came from non-organic foods products and are being found in others too. This helped people to recognize organic foods and increase the thought that organic foods are healthier since it wouldn’t contain such ingredients. If the product is truly organic it wouldn’t contain any artificial chemical or substances that are harmful to the human body and this became the main reason for the huge growth. Since health is one of the areas that many people are interested those who can afford would prefer organic foods.”

     Compared to my current style, the things I wrote a couple years ago seem very taciturn and dull. The source for the sudden change in my style was the book called “I’m a stranger here myself”, written by, my favorite author, Bill Bryson. Here’s an excerpt from the book.

     “I decided to clean out the refrigerator the other day. We don't usually clean out our fridge-we just box it up every four or five years and send it off to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta with a note to help themselves to anything that looks scientifically promising-but we hadn't seen one of the cats for a few days and I had a vague recollection of having glimpsed something furry on the bottom shelf, toward the back. (Turned out to be a large piece of gorgonzola.)

So there I was down on my knees unwrapping pieces of foil and peering cautiously into Tupperware containers when I came across an interesting product called a breakfast pizza. I examined it with a kind of rueful fondness, as you might regard an old photograph of yourself dressed in clothes that you cannot believe you ever thought were stylish. The breakfast pizza, you see, represented the last surviving relic of a bout of very serious retail foolishness on my part.”(Bill Bryson, Junk Food Heaven)

     You laughed as you read it right? That’s what I really liked about his style. No matter how serious or heavy the topic was, he was always able to mix some humor into it. Bill Bryson never failed to get me laughing and like one of my teachers said, “that never hurts”. Now I’ve got much more talkative in my writing, it was the perfect timing for me to get talkative and thats what I did. 

     From the quite little boy, I slowly became a talkative little boy. Then during the last summer of his middle school year, the talkative little boy came to KMLA for the first time to participate in a debating competition. At that time, I didn’t even know the format or what I had to do as a debater. I just came here as if I was a tourist not a competitor. As I prepared and did the debate, I began to love it. Don’t take me wrong, but I really came to love the tension that came right before I gave my speech and the ecstasy that came from finding flaws and ways to reconstruct our stances. But over everything else, the fact itself that you had to “Speak Out” on your opinion was what drove me the most.

     With that experience, I applied to the debating club when I came to high school. I heard from a lot of the juniors that the club was really time consuming, but that didn’t matter much for me. “The grade point average, you see, represented the last surviving relic of a bout of very serious academic foolishness on my part”. With only passion in my heart, really no skills at all, I began debating. It was really hard in the beginning, and it still is. The seniors in the adjudication seats was what scared me the most. You never get used to it, not even if you do it over and over for a year.

      Thats what I did. During my freshman year, I’ve learned a lot of things from various classes. I really do feel that I’ve taken something away from the effort that I put in for a year but apart from the class assignments and so on, what I consider most worthwhile is the skills that I’ve acquired as I practiced debating. Debates aren’t just about refutation. That’s a major part that is seen on the outside, but from what I’ve felt, what we really earn is the practice of organizing and spelling our thoughts out to the others. No matter how much pressure we are in, we had to squeeze out every last word inside our brains. At first, it was to fill the time limit. Later, it became a problem of organizing the most into the limited time. The various background knowledge that accumulated from the research that we do for preparation was a bonus that came along. 

     Just two days ago(Dec. 3rd), I was on the bus going down to Gwangju for the last debating competition of the year. We broke the preliminary rounds as the second seed and lost the next round. We ended up as a quater finalist. Not bad, really good actually, but I did feel a bit dejected by the results. The air inside the convening room that we had our debate in seemed suddenly a bit darker as if to reflect my mood. As the breakers for the next round was announced, my teammates and I walked out to get something to eat. The fog inside my mind condensed as we walked down the stairs of the convention center, until I looked back that is. When I looked back at the building, I really began to realize how huge it was. 
     

     With the sun on its back, the building hung on the horizon. And I realized that I had the chance, that I might never have had imagined as the quite little kid. I was all suited up and standing in front of a huge building that I’ve just debated in. And even the room that we debated in were normally for all those important looking old men in black suites. I stood in front of the judges in one of those rooms. I debated in one of those rooms. I had argued my thoughts in one of those rooms. And I spoke out--perhaps for the first time in my life.