Essential+Question+Essay+on+The+River

Essential Question Essay on __The River__ Conflict Fill-in-the-Blank Paragraph

The conflict in Gary Paulsen’s The River changes. At the beginning, the conflict is that Brian needs to decide whether or not Brian should go into the wilderness and risk his life or if he should not go into the wilderness. Once Brian and Derek are out in the wilderness, the conflict or problem is that Brian has to show Derek how he survived in the wild before, when he was alone. He also has to show Derek how he can survive .After the lightning strike of Derek, the conflict changes. Now, Brian must try to bring Derek home and try to help him survive while Derek is in his coma. In all three conflicts, things have changes. For example at first it wasn’t a real emergency. All it was was a question. ”If he wants to go back in the woods or if he doesn’t”. When they get there the conflict changes because Derek gets hit by lightning and it gets into a very serious situation. That is what changed in those conflicts.

Here is more work of yours, I found [Mr. Baskin]:


 * Write a eight- to twelve-sentence paragraph that describes how the conflict in The River changes. **


 * Describe what the conflict is at the beginning. What changes? What stays the same? **


 * In the book the river, the conflict changes a lot. One of the conflicts is that Derek wants Brian to go back in the wilderness to show him how he survived for that long. At first when Derek asked Brian, Brian thought Derek was crazy for asking him but after a while Derek finally said he would do it. When Brian and Derek go into the wild, a storm hits and Derek gets hit by lightning. Derek didn’t wake up the next day so Brian started to panic. He tried to wake up Derek but he wouldn’t wake up. After a couple of days Brian had to do something. He built a raft and put Derek on it and got in the river. **

Use the following fill-in-the-blank version to help you write your introduction to The River.

The essential question asked by Gary Paulsen in The River is, “How should one behave in the face of overwhelming difficulty?” The answer that Paulsen gives is that to overcome an overwhelming difficulty, one should be intelligent. You need to be intelligent because you need the ability to learn when you are out in the wilderness. Also you need to be intelligent because you need to learn how to catch fish, and cook them; you need to learn how to survive in the wilderness. That is why he needs to be intelligent. The next trait is caring. Brian needs to be caring because if he didn’t show concern and if he didn’t care, he would have never saved Derek and Derek would have never survived. The last trait is strong. Brian needed to be strong because if he was not he wouldn’t of had the ability to do anything or have any physical power to do anything. He wouldn’t have survived and neither would Derek. This will be proven by the text in the novel __The River.__