pay it forward movie essay

Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Pay It Forward — Pay It Forward Movie: Analysis of Trevor Mckinney’s Self-concept

Pay It Forward Movie: Analysis of Trevor Mckinney’s Self-concept

• Categories: Film Analysis Movie Review Pay It Forward

About this sample

Words: 867 |

Published: Apr 2, 2020

Words: 867 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Entertainment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

5 pages / 2217 words

5.5 pages / 2615 words

4.5 pages / 2006 words

10.5 pages / 4766 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Pay It Forward

Pay it forward is a film adaptation of a book with the same title written by Catherine Ryan Hyde. It is a drama and romance film directed by Mimi Leder starring Kevin Spacey as Eugene Simonet, Helen Hunt as Arlene McKinney, [...]

Carol Rogers, an American psychologist, believes every child is the center of their changing world; that for are the strategist working towards becoming self-actualized. The cognitive process is important, and this is the [...]

In the world in which we are living today I think that there is a lot to change. After watching the film I realize we do not live in a perfect world. In the present day we are just living with a smile on our faces, but inside we [...]

The character name is Trevor McKinney for this assignment from the movie Pay it Forward. The character is in Erik Erikson’s late school-age stage which is the fourth stage industry vs inferiority. The theory that will be using [...]

The American Dream varies for individuals, but for most it includes providing a stable home for their children and ensuring future generations will have more opportunities to become successful. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun [...]

The controversy surrounding Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange relates primarily to the central themes that are explored in both books. Nevertheless, the brutality and explicit [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, pay it forward.

Now streaming on:

Someone does you a good turn. You pass it on to three other people. They pass it on. And what a wonderful world this will be. That's the theory behind "Pay It Forward," a movie that might have been more entertaining if it didn't believe it. It's a seductive theory, but in the real world, altruism is less powerful than selfishness, greed, nepotism, xenophobia, tribalism and paranoia. If you doubt me, take another look at the front pages.

Consider Las Vegas, the setting of the movie. If every person in trouble there paid it forward to three more people, there would be more Gamblers Anonymous members than gamblers. An intriguing premise, but not one that occurs to this movie--although Alcoholics Anonymous plays a supporting role and paying it forward is of course the 12th step.

The movie has its heart in the right place, but not its screenplay. It tells a story that audience members will want to like, but it doesn't tell it strongly and cleanly enough; it puts too many loops into the plot, and its ending is shamelessly soapy for the material. Two or three times during the film I was close to caving in and going with the flow, but the story lost the way and I was brought back up to the surface again.

Haley Joel Osment , the gifted young actor from " The Sixth Sense ," stars as Trevor, a resourceful latchkey kid whose father has disappeared and whose mother, Arlene ( Helen Hunt ), works two jobs as a Vegas cocktail waitress. She's a recovering alcoholic with a few relapses still to go. At school, Trevor is impressed by the grave, distant presence of his new teacher, Mr. Simonet ( Kevin Spacey ), whose face is scarred by burns.

Mr. Simonet doesn't want to win any popularity contests. "Do I strike you as someone falsely nice?" he asks Trevor. "No," the boy replies thoughtfully, "you're not even really all that nice." But Trevor responds to the lack of condescension in the teacher's manner: Mr. Simonet has standards and applies them in the classroom. On the first day of school, he writes the year's assignment on the blackboard: Think of an idea that could change the world. Trevor thinks. Things happen in his life to help him think and guide his thinking, and before long his mother discovers that a homeless man ( James Caviezel ) is living in their garage. It was Trevor's idea to invite him in. Then he can pay it forward.

There are complications. One of Trevor's theories is that his mom and Mr. Simonet would both be a lot happier if they were dating each other. Mr. Simonet does not agree. Spacey does a wonderful job of suggesting the pain just beneath the surface of the character; the teacher's life is manageable only because he sticks to his routine. But Trevor plugs away, all but shoving the two adults toward each other. This is, unfortunately, the kind of self-propelling plot device that, once allowed into a movie, takes it over and dictates an obligatory series of events. Since it is self-evident that Trevor is right, we know with a sinking feeling that the screenplay must detour into tentative acceptance, hurt rejection, silly misunderstandings, angry retreats, confessions, tearful reconciliations and resolutions, all in the usual order.

The movie intercuts between the predictable progress of the romance and the uncertain progress of Trevor's pay-it-forward scheme. We meet various supporting characters who get involved in paying it forward, and the time line is not always clear. The movie opens with one of those off-the-shelf hostage crisis scenes that ends with a criminal crashing into a reporter's car, and a stranger giving the reporter a new Jaguar. He's paying it forward. Then we flash back to "four months earlier" and Trevor's first day of school, but soon we're back to the present again, as the reporter tries to track down the pay-it-forward stories, and the lawyer who gave away the Jaguar tells why.

This leads to another flashback: When the lawyer's daughter had an asthma attack and was ignored in an emergency room, he explains, a gun-waving African-American stabbing victim forced a nurse to give the kid oxygen and told him to pay it forward. It's an effective cameo, but it's awkward the way the movie cuts between scenes like that, Trevor's own setbacks and the tentative romance.

With a cleaner story line, the basic idea could have been free to deliver. As it is, we get a better movie than we might have, because the performances are so good: Spacey as a vulnerable and wounded man; Hunt as a woman no less wounded in her own way, and Osment, once again proving himself the equal of adult actors in the complexity and depth of his performance. I believed in them and cared for them. I wish the movie could have gotten out of their way.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

I Saw the TV Glow

Robert daniels.

The Fall Guy

Brian tallerico.

Sweet Dreams

Matt zoller seitz.

Clint Worthington

Art College 1994

Simon abrams.

The Strangers: Chapter 1

Film credits.

Pay It Forward (2000)

Rated PG-13 For Mature Thematic Elements Including Substance Abuse/Recovery, Some Sexual Situations, Language and Brief Violence

122 minutes

Jim Caviezel as Jerry

Jay Mohr as Chris Chandler

Haley Joel Osment as Trevor

Helen Hunt as Arlene McKinney

Kevin Spacey as Eugene Simonet

Directed by

• Leslie Dixon

Latest blog posts

Cannes 2024: Megalopolis

Cannes 2024: Kinds of Kindness; Oh, Canada; Scénarios

Book Excerpt: Hollywood Pride by Alonso Duralde

Cannes 2024: Megalopolis, Bird, The Damned, Meeting with Pol Pot

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Pay It Forward

• A young boy attempts to make the world a better place after his teacher gives him that chance.
• Young Trevor McKinney, troubled by his mother's alcoholism and fears of his abusive but absent father, is caught up by an intriguing assignment from his new social studies teacher, Mr. Simonet. The assignment: think of something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor conjures the notion of paying a favor not back, but forward--repaying good deeds not with payback, but with new good deeds done to three new people. Trevor's efforts to make good on his idea bring a revolution not only in the lives of himself, his mother and his physically and emotionally scarred teacher, but in those of an ever-widening circle of people completely unknown to him. — Jim Beaver <[email protected]>
• A school social studies assignment leads to social changes that spread from city-to-city. Assigned to come up with some idea that will improve mankind, a young boy decides that if he can do three good deeds for someone and they in turn can "pay it forward" and so forth, positive changes can occur. What appears to initially be a failure, is indeed a success that is not immediately known but is traced backwards by a reporter who is a benefactor. The initial recipients of the boy are a drug addict, his badly scarred school teacher, and a classmate who is constantly bullied by his peers. While physically and mentally scarred by past events, the teacher is not the only one bearing scars. The young boy fears his mother's fate, particularly at his brutal, alcoholic father's hands. The mother also bears scars from her childhood with a homeless, alcoholic mother. — John Sacksteder <[email protected]>
• A 12-year-old schoolboy in Las Vegas, Nevada named Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) is given a class project to complete by his social studies teacher Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey), a man with terrible burn scars on his face and neck. His task is to come up with a plan that will change the world through direct action. On his way home from school later that day, Trevor notices a homeless man, Jerry (James Caviezel) and decides to make a difference in Jerry's life. Trevor then comes up with the plan to "pay it forward" by doing a good deed for three people who must in turn each do good deeds for three other people, creating a charitable pyramid scheme. Trevor's plan is to help Jerry by feeding and housing him so he can "get on his feet." The next morning, Trevor's mother, Arlene McKinney (Helen Hunt), a single mother recovering from alcoholism, becomes angry with Trevor after finding Jerry in their house. She then accuses and confronts Eugene at the school about the reason Trevor has allowed Jerry into their home. Eugene is also intrigued by Trevor's response to the social studies project. Later that night back at their home, Trevor confronts his mother about her alcoholism, and in a fit of anger she slaps him across the face. Trevor runs away from home, and Arlene asks Eugene to help her find him. They find Trevor at a bus station, about to be molested. Trevor and Arlene embrace in relief after Arlene apologizes profusely. Meanwhile, Chris (Jay Mohr), a journalist, is trying to find out why a total stranger gave him a brand new Jaguar S-Type car after Chris' old 1965 Ford Mustang was damaged in a car accident. The stranger's only explanation is that he is simply "paying it forward". When Chris asks him for more information, the man explains that, when he recently visited a hospital while his daughter was suffering an asthma attack, a gang member suffering from a stab wound actually took up a gun to force the doctors to look at the man's daughter before she collapsed, prompting Chris to begin his search again. After Trevor's apparently unsuccessful attempt to help Jerry, he decides to help Eugene by setting him up with Arlene, Trevor's own mother. Their relationship grows in strength until Arlene's ex-husband, Ricky (Jon Bon Jovi), who claims he has "changed" and has quit drinking, shows up unannounced and Arlene decides to give him another chance. When Arlene later tries to explain her choice to Eugene, the audience learns how Eugene's burns were the result of terrible child abuse by his father. Eugene is concerned not just about the abusive and violent nature of Trevor's father, but that the simple absence of a loving father is detrimental to Trevor's well-being. He explains that his father was always abusive of him and his mother always took him back. At thirteen, Eugene ran away from home and returned home when he was 16, asking his mother to come with him but his father knocked him out and proceeded to burn him, resulting in a number of scars on his chest. Arlene feels that she must nevertheless give her ex-husband another chance, but shortly thereafter he becomes angry and violent and it appears that he has not in fact stopped drinking alcohol. Arlene realizes what a terrible mistake she has made. She feels that Eugene will never take her back, and Eugene for his part is not prepared to rekindle the relationship. At around this point, Jerry, who has moved on to another city, discovers a woman about to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge; even when she throws her purse at him and yells at him to get away, Jerry simply talks gently to her, encouraging her to come down and talk to him about her problems. Meanwhile, Chris discovers the gang member who helped the man's daughter, who reveals that he was brought into the 'pay it forward' movement when he was rescued from the police by a homeless woman in a car. Having located the woman (played by Angie Dickinson), she tells Chris that she herself was given the idea by her daughter--who turns out to be Arlene. Arlene seeks out her mother, Grace, whom she has not seen in three years. She says she wishes to say something to her and gives her mother the gift that enables Grace to have faith that she can become sober for a few days, long enough to visit the family and see her grandson: Arlene tells her mother that she forgives her for everything. Chris finally identifies Trevor as the originator of "pay it forward," and conducts a recorded interview at the school. Trevor explains his hopes for the concept, but voices his concerns that people may be too afraid to change their own lives in order to make the whole world a better place. Eugene and Arlene are both present during the interview. When Eugene hears Trevor's words, he realizes that he and Arlene should be together. As Eugene and Arlene reconcile with a passionate embrace, they hear shouts and scuffling outside. Trevor has come to the defense of a friend who is being attacked by bullies, and is trying to fight them off, although they are older and bigger. As Eugene and Arlene run down to stop the fight, the main bully who is a gangster-like boy impulsively pulls out a knife. Trevor is pushed onto the boy with the knife and is thus inadvertently stabbed in the abdomen. Trevor is rushed to hospital, where he dies from the stabbing. Terribly distraught, Arlene and Eugene are later watching a television news report about "pay it forward" and Trevor's death, and learn that the movement has grown nationwide. Venturing outside, they see hundreds of people gathering in a vigil to pay their respects to Trevor, with yet more people arriving in a stream of vehicles visible in the distance as the movie ends. (Source: WikiPedia. Bangs_McCoy)

Contribute to this page

• IMDb Answers: Help fill gaps in our data
• Learn more about contributing

More from this title

More to explore.

Recently viewed

• Skip to content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Additional menu

Coach Lippy

Building Freedom

Main navigation

Pay It Forward: A Reflection

posted on July 13, 2015

I wrote this as a reflection piece for a course on transformative coaching I am taking up.  It’s about the movie: Pay It Forward.  Sharing the insights and lessons learned.

—–

We’re all in this world to pay it forward. In little ways, in big ways, in ways we won’t ever know or can’t even begin to imagine.

In a nutshell, it was about people making an effort to “pay it forward.” Helping other people in a big way, and in turn, those being helped “paying it forward” by helping other people.  All the while struggling with what life throws at them, and what life has given them in the past.

It was an interesting movie, to say the least. I didn’t like the ending. But what I did like was how the different characters struggled with what they’ve got.

What I liked even more, was how the characters started to move forward , change their lives, even by a little, and pay it forward as well, all with what they’ve got.

Trevor, the main character of the story, of course played the part of the prime mover in the movie, showing us that the strength and courage to do new things, and to actually do something about it, is what gets change going.

It was also interesting to note what got him moving in the first place.

It was because “everything… sucks.”

And I take it from the movie that he didn’t want life to stay that way.

Have you ever had a “everything… sucks” moment? A moment where you hit rock-bottom, that life couldn’t get any worse.   Or you just want so badly for your life to take a turn for the better.

“Everything… sucks.” And Trevor decided to do something about it.  Which sparks off a chain of events that he couldn’t have foreseen or imagined.

Arlene, Trevor’s Mom, showed in the movie that we make mistakes sometimes.  In the heat of the moment, we do things we don’t mean, and we hurt others, even ourselves.  Yet, we can also rise above that, and find it in ourselves to forgive ourselves, and in turn, forgive others.

She also showed us how we can be blinded by how we want things to turn out, by our expectation of how our lives will go, and how the people in our lives act.  And how we expect others to make us happy.

Arlene was waiting for Ricky, Trevor’s dad, to return, give up drinking, and give her that happily married life she’s been looking for.  It’s not so easy, and it doesn’t work that way.

Eugene, or Mr. Simonet, also shows us how we can be blinded.  This time by past experiences and hurts.

And how he, or we, can continue to live life through those lenses .  A life bound by our beliefs of how others might see us or judge us, because of our scars, both literally and figuratively.

And how we put up our routines, and walls, to feel safe, to avoid being hurt, like how we’ve been hurt in the past.

And then there’s Chris, the reporter, who after losing his car in the opening scenes, gets a brand new Jaguar handed to him, with the instructions to “pay it forward.”  He almost lost it trying to give back the Jaguar, or finding out why he was just given one.

He shows us how we don’t believe we are worthy of blessings and graces .  That we are also not deserving of help. That we didn’t work for it.  Or we didn’t pay for it.

That we aren’t humble enough to just say: “Yes, Thank you.”

But all of them, showed the power of the human spirit.  Showed the power of positive actions, and how that changes one’s life, as well as others.

All of them had their own struggles.  All of them their own hurts and pains, traumas and experiences.

All of them decided to pay it forward and to act to help others.

And all of the scenes and interrelationships in the movie, reminds me that we all have an effect on each other, and it’s up to us, to me, if I will be a positive influence on others.

With how we interact and treat other people, we are essentially “paying it forward.”  We may not always pay forward what helps other people, but the effort is also important.

The effort to help other people, and to share what positive things they have, had the power to change other people’s lives.

It had the power to change their own lives as well.  Through the course of the movie, they became more at peace with themselves, more honest, stronger, yet sensitive.

Life can get sucky.  There will come moments in time when “life sucks.”  That’s a fact.   It’s up to us what we make of it, and how we weather those times.

I’ve come across a quote, though I don’t remember where:

“When life gets hard, don’t ask for life to get easier, ask that you become a better person instead.”

That simple looking all year assignment given by Mr. Simonet at first day of class, got Trevor thinking, and his actions had such a profound effect on a lot of people.

Trevor wanted to help people, but he didn’t end up doing everything for them.  He trusted them to use what they received, and help themselves as well.

Trevor wasn’t exactly sure what would happen, or how things would turn out, but he believed in them.

That believing in people, can somehow get them believing in themselves.  That this can help them find the power within themselves to make choices that will change their lives.

Believing in others makes such a huge difference.  People have it in them to solve their problems, and people have what it takes to take control of their life, and change it for the better.

Even Jerry, the homeless man Trevor fed and let in his house, was able to help someone else towards the end of the movie.  He had it in him all along, and what he got from Trevor was a kickstart to get him going and believing in himself.

People tend to forget what we do to them, and tend to remember what we made them feel.

And it all begins with believing .

Picture from the Motion Picture: Pay It Forward (2000), Warner Bros. Pictures

Reader Interactions

January 18, 2016 at 12:03 am

Very good reflection!! Iv’e got a good lesson.

January 18, 2016 at 12:31 am

Thanks so much Jeven!

September 13, 2016 at 1:32 pm

I like ur comment ! I understand ur reflection very well .

September 13, 2016 at 3:43 pm

Thanks Alexis! I appreciate the compliment.

November 1, 2016 at 9:45 am

this is my son’s 2nd term written task in his English class now, and your article helped him explained well his paper. Thank you for the insights. ❤️

November 2, 2016 at 12:52 am

You’re welcome Chichi! Hope he was also able to deepen his realizations. 🙂

February 19, 2021 at 1:59 pm

This is so great! it makes me feel like I’m watching the movie. It helps me a lot in writing my essay

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

• Entertainment
• Environment
• Information Science and Technology
• Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Entertainment Film Analysis

Movie Review Of “Pay It Forward”

*minimum deadline

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below

• Groundhog Day
• Patch Adams
• Stranger Things
• Song Analysis

Related Essays

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

Reflection Paper, Pay It Forward Movie Essay Example

• Pages: 4 (904 words)
• Published: April 27, 2017
• Type: Film Analysis

What do you do when someone does you a favor? Instead of paying him back, Trevor McKinney tells you to pay it forward. Pay It Forward is about a 7th grader Trevor McKinney, the son of an alcoholic and single mother Arlene. Mr. Simonet is Trevor's unconventional Social Studies teacher who gives his class an unexpected assignment at their first meeting. "Think of an idea to change the world and put it into action. " Simonet wants his pupils not only to know current events but also to think of making a difference in society. Trevor comes up with an idea.

He will do an act of kindness to three people and instead of being paid back with gratitude, he will ask each recipient to pay it forward to three more people. They in turn must pay another good deed to

three other people, and so on. Trevor works on a homeless man, his teacher Simonet, and his classmate Adam. Four months later, a reporter's car crashes while on a beat and a stranger gives him his Jaguar to keep. A bit unrealistic, yes, but a great action to represent kindness. Being kind usually starts a positive chain reaction.

The reporter tries to find out why anyone would do such thing and was told to simply "pay it forward. Pay it forward is a movie about helping others, but it is more a look at the personal conflicts of several different people. The boy is forced to live with a less than idealistic lifestyle. His mom is a drunk who has an abusive husband. His teacher is covered with burns, and there must be reasoning to it. First off, I like th

theme of Pay it Forward. Although you might not realize it at first, the movie is working on two timelines at the same time, one following the boy as he creates The Idea, and the other following a reporter who is trying to track down the creator of The Idea.

Pay it Forward is a movie about society, and what each of us can do to improve it. Each character represents many different life lessons. One of the most characters that I really liked was Trevor McKinney. He was able to create a unique concept called ‘Pay it Forward’. It consists of doing a large favor for 3 different people, and like a pyramid, spreading the word to each of them to do favors for 3 other strangers. Many people can think about doing something like this, but Trevor actually does it.

It shows how truly giving he was. Under the toughest of circumstances, Trevor focused on helping others, and that is why for me he really played an important role in the movie. As the movie continues on I didn’t really expect that Trevor would not be able to see much of his accomplishment with his project because at the end of the movie, Trevor dies by being stabbed by another student, who is bullying Adam (The kid that Trevor once helped).

This movie is the perfect example of how a movie should be, it makes you laugh, cry a lot, and it is something that stays in your heart and keeps you thinking for weeks afterwards. This movie seems realistic when it comes to the problems faced by people in everyday life. These real life problems that

affect everyday people are alcoholism, divorce, drug addictions, child addictions, child abuse, and so much more. If you were to go into any classroom and talk to ten to twenty students, you would probably find students that are facing these problems at home.

This is an extremely horrible thing that children’s these days have to deal with and I think that people sometimes just look the other way and try to ignore it. Movies like this will hopefully open people’s eyes and they will learn that they can do something to help. This movie shows that it takes one person to start a movement to change someone’s life for the better. The part of the movie that was really unrealistic for me is changing the world. Yes, one person can make a difference, but they cannot change the world.

The movie shows that Trevor’s plan to “Pay it forward” works, but it is just a movie. In real life, I could not picture people doing the favors that were done in this movie, for example the first favor you see is someone giving away their jaguar car to the reporter, after the reporter’s car is damaged. It would be wonderful if “Pay it forward” could really happen in real life, but it is highly impossible. The world would be a beautiful place if only people would be willing to help each other and not expect a favor back.

I never heard of this movie before, up until a couple of week ago during our Christmas break when my sister suggested we watch the movie together saying how moving and hearth warming it was. It may not have the

happiest ending, but it shows that one person can make a difference no matter what their age. Some one that is in their teens like me could impact the world just as much, if not more, than someone in their fifties. All in all this was a great movie with inspiring messages that makes you want to help other people.

• Reflection Paper – “Moms.Com” Essay Example
• First Quarter Reflection Essay Example
• TIP Module Reflection Essay Example
• Description of a Frightening Place Essay Example
• Short reflection on the CPA exercise Essay Example
• Analysis of Meta Image Not to Be Reproduced Essay Example
• Hindu Reflection Essay Example
• Including Samuel Reflection Assignment Essay Example
• Night Flying Women Reflection Essay Example
• Reflections Paper Essay Example
• My Reflection Paper in Estrellas Essay Example
• Reflection About the Indolence of the Filipinos Essay Example
• Ron Clark Story Reflection Paper Essay Example
• Mbti Reflection Paper Essay Example
• Integrative Reflection Paper Essay Example
•  John Locke essays
• 9/11 essays
• A Good Teacher essays
• A Healthy Diet essays
• A Modest Proposal essays
• A&P essays
• Academic Achievement essays
• Achievement essays
• Achieving goals essays
• Admission essays
• Advantages And Disadvantages Of Internet essays
• Alcoholic drinks essays
• Ammonia essays
• Analytical essays
• Ancient Olympic Games essays
• Arabian Peninsula essays
• Argument essays
• Argumentative essays
• Atlantic Ocean essays
• Auto-ethnography essays
• Autobiography essays
• Ballad essays
• Batman essays
• Binge Eating essays
• Black Power Movement essays
• Blogger essays
• Body Mass Index essays
• Book I Want a Wife essays
• Boycott essays
• Breastfeeding essays
• Bulimia Nervosa essays
• Business essays
• Business Process essays
• Canterbury essays
• Carbonate essays
• Catalina de Erauso essays
• Cause and Effect essays
• Cesar Chavez essays
• Character Analysis essays
• Chemical Compound essays
• Chemical Element essays
• Chemical Substance essays
• Cherokee essays
• Cherry essays
• Childhood Obesity essays
• Chlorine essays
• Classification essays
• Cognitive Science essays

Haven't found what you were looking for?

Search for samples, answers to your questions and flashcards.

• Enter your topic/question
• Receive an explanation
• Ask one question at a time
• Enter a specific assignment topic
• Aim at least 500 characters
• a topic sentence that states the main or controlling idea
• supporting sentences to explain and develop the point you’re making
• evidence from your reading or an example from the subject area that supports your point
• analysis of the implication/significance/impact of the evidence finished off with a critical conclusion you have drawn from the evidence.

Unfortunately copying the content is not possible

Tell us your email address and we’ll send this sample there..

By continuing, you agree to our Terms and Conditions .

Pay It Forward

65 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-15

Chapters 16-18

Chapters 19-21

Chapters 22-26

Chapters 27-29

Chapters 30-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Who do you perceive as the main character of the novel? Defend your answer using examples from the text.

In the 2000 film adaptation of the novel, two changes are made to the character of Reuben: he is white, and his face was severely burned by his father as a child, instead of mutilated in the Vietnam War. How might these changes affect the progression of the novel, specifically relating to major plot points, themes, and Reuben’s character?

Discuss the structure of the novel—how does its figurative shape echo the novel’s thematic sentiments? 

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Related Titles

By Catherine Ryan Hyde

Have You Seen Luis Velez?

Catherine Ryan Hyde

Featured Collections

Books Made into Movies

View Collection