Scott Gill's Blog - Posts Tagged "paulsen"
Dogsong by Gary Paulsen
A Quest for Manhood… Dogsong by Gary Paulsen
When my boys turn 13, we have a ritual that they all have had to go through. It sounds goofy but it is our little ritual so we frankly don’t care what others think.
The morning of their birthday I brew them a cup of coffee, strong coffee. Working for Starbuck’s for two years, putting extra food on the table, developed in me a passion for gourmet, dark roasted coffee. One sip and your eyes brighten. When I was a kid, coffee was viewed as an adult’s drink(kids drank K
ool-Aid); my guys have always loved the caramel-nutty smell, but never the taste. So I brew them a cup that they have to finish, a kind of initiation, and then we take off to the gun range.
It is a place that cries for responsibility: all sorts of people with all sorts of guns shooting hundreds of rounds of hot lead. The range officers are strict, bordering mean, and they should be, carelessness means death. We shoot high power rifles and 12 gauge shotguns, and we apply rules and responsibility I’ve taught them for years. At that range, they learn the ultimate power and they learn the need to control it, to act with maturity and responsibility—the mark of a man. That event is our family’s passage to becoming a man.
Dogsong, by Gary Paulsen, is a story of such a passage. Cast on the arctic coast of Alaska, it is the story of Russell Susskit, a 14 year-old Eskimo who lives on a government reservation with his sick father. The thin walls of their provided box-house allowed the annoying rumble of snowmobiles, the modern machine that has crippled their people’s hunting, their ability to live off the land as their ancestors.
“I’m not happy with myself,” is the thought that drives Russell to living with the town’s blind Shaman who sends Russell on a series of adventures such as running a dogsled and hunting with bow and spear. Russell embraces the old ways and departs on a journey quest to find his song, his expression of meaning.
Paulsen is the master of the survival story shown by his beloved work, Hatchet, and Dogsong delivers no less of an adventure. But where Brian Robeson’s adventure is spurred by an accident, Russell’s is sought, his quest for something greater in his life. It is a quest for manhood and meaning, which so many boys today need; a journey-quest that forces us to learn and embrace responsibility.
When my boys turn 13, we have a ritual that they all have had to go through. It sounds goofy but it is our little ritual so we frankly don’t care what others think.
The morning of their birthday I brew them a cup of coffee, strong coffee. Working for Starbuck’s for two years, putting extra food on the table, developed in me a passion for gourmet, dark roasted coffee. One sip and your eyes brighten. When I was a kid, coffee was viewed as an adult’s drink(kids drank K
ool-Aid); my guys have always loved the caramel-nutty smell, but never the taste. So I brew them a cup that they have to finish, a kind of initiation, and then we take off to the gun range.
It is a place that cries for responsibility: all sorts of people with all sorts of guns shooting hundreds of rounds of hot lead. The range officers are strict, bordering mean, and they should be, carelessness means death. We shoot high power rifles and 12 gauge shotguns, and we apply rules and responsibility I’ve taught them for years. At that range, they learn the ultimate power and they learn the need to control it, to act with maturity and responsibility—the mark of a man. That event is our family’s passage to becoming a man.
Dogsong, by Gary Paulsen, is a story of such a passage. Cast on the arctic coast of Alaska, it is the story of Russell Susskit, a 14 year-old Eskimo who lives on a government reservation with his sick father. The thin walls of their provided box-house allowed the annoying rumble of snowmobiles, the modern machine that has crippled their people’s hunting, their ability to live off the land as their ancestors.
“I’m not happy with myself,” is the thought that drives Russell to living with the town’s blind Shaman who sends Russell on a series of adventures such as running a dogsled and hunting with bow and spear. Russell embraces the old ways and departs on a journey quest to find his song, his expression of meaning.
Paulsen is the master of the survival story shown by his beloved work, Hatchet, and Dogsong delivers no less of an adventure. But where Brian Robeson’s adventure is spurred by an accident, Russell’s is sought, his quest for something greater in his life. It is a quest for manhood and meaning, which so many boys today need; a journey-quest that forces us to learn and embrace responsibility.
