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Rule Of The Bone Essay

Decent Essays

While reading Rule of the Bone by Russel Banks, you will notice different themes that are shown throughout the novel. After reading the novel I realized that the search for independence is the most important theme in this novel. People will have different explanations of what they think independence means. Independence is being able to complete tasks on your own. You do not need somebody there to hold your hand whenever you do something. Independence is not having your actions, opinions, etc. controlled by somebody else. How is the search for independence in Rule of the Bone considered the most important theme in the novel? Russel Banks answers this question with the events Chappie (Bone) encounters throughout his journey.
Chappie lives with …show more content…

If he went to Jamaica in the beginning of the novel, he would have made the choice to stay there because he would not have realized that it was the wrong decision. Russ moving to Jamaica shows that Chappie’s journey made him more independent and mature enough to not stay in Jamaica and waste his life. While talking about Russ in Jamaica, Chappie says “It would’ve been me, if it hadn’t been for Sister Rose and I-Man and everything I’d learned about myself and life from coming to love them out there at the school bus in Plattsburgh and being with I-Man afterwards at the ant farm and up on the groundation in Accompong” (Banks 384). Jamaica was proved to be an important turning point in Chappie’s life. It is the time in his life that he changed from a child to an adult. He goes from a child that just cares about smoking marijuana to someone that realizes that life is not just about smoking marijuana all the time. He starts to look at the future and wants to do something with his life. Even though his three friends were gone he knew that “if I didn’t know what to do next I could ask I-Man to instruct me, and across the huge cold silence of the universe I’d hear him say, Up to you, Bone, and that’s all I’d need” (Banks 390). Chappie knows that wherever he goes, he will have his three friends with him all the time to keep him

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