Like Experiences Bring Understanding

      Humans communicate and learn through storytelling. Stories have an innate ability to convey emotions and experiences. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell is one such story that teaches through the experiences of its characters. Although the text has been under fire from censors and interest groups, Eleanor and Park continues to be well received by critics and readers a like. Eleanor and Park captivates audiences, both young adults and other readers, because of its familiar experiences and fast-paced narrative.  

            Any person that has gone to school has experienced bullying in one form or another. Either they were the bullies or the bullied. From the first moment readers meet both Park and Eleanor, it is easy to identify the aggressors on the bus. Steve and his cronies, including Tina, seem to have made it their life goal to make everyone miserable. Tina says one day on the bus “Watch it, Raghead” (Rowell 31). Tina also plasters Eleanor’s gym locker with sanitary napkins and flushes her clothes down the toilet. The bullying even effects Park and insights him to fight Steve.

            Much of the bullying Eleanor experiences revolves around her body image. As noted previously, Tina makes a snide remark about Eleanor’s hair on the bus. She also was called “Big Red” because of her physical size. Even Park experiences moments of body image issues. Since he is an American-Korean, he doesn’t feel like he fits in. He is too short and his hair and eyes are too dark. Both Eleanor and Park struggle with accepting their bodies for the way they are. Their insecurities are palpable and felt by readers. Everyone has questioned to color of their eyes, their weight, and the way their hair doesn’t cooperate. Bullies and body image are two experiences all readers can easily relate to. It provides an avenue in which readers can empathize with the characters, allowing the author to discuss very complex and controversial issues.

            These complex issues, however, happen in a very fast-paced narrative that covers nearly two years in less than a three-hundred page text. The author uses a unique writing style that makes the text flow much faster. Rowell’s third-person narrative shifts between Eleanor’s and Park’s point of view. The shifting creates an atmosphere in the text that conveys the emotion and experience of each character from inside their own head as the events unfold. Because of this fast-paced feel, Rowell is capable of giving detail and lingering on the major themes of her text without tiring the reader. As Holmes states in her article, the “novel’s purpose is hope, even in the most difficult and alienating circumstances” (Holmes). By providing readers with two distinct viewpoints, Rowell engages her audience in a complex and emotional tale of fear, love, and triumph.

            By exploring experiences familiar to all readers in a fast-paced way, readers are drawn to Eleanor and Park and are endeared to the characters, allowing Rowell to examine controversial issues. Readers become acquainted with Eleanor and Park in a stressful, confrontational, bully-filled bus. The bullies follow Eleanor closely in school. They damage her clothes, humiliate her, and give her mean nicknames. Park is accosted verbally by individuals in the bus and, through his relationship with Eleanor, is effected by more bullying indirectly. These common experiences, common to all readers, create a path by which Rowell is able to open up her readers to the distressing circumstances Eleanor finds herself in. Rowell creatively depicts both Park’s and Eleanor’s point of view and endears her readers to her characters. The anger, fear, frustration, and pain that both characters experience are simultaneously experienced by readers. This text attracts readers not for its mildly inappropriate language, physical experiences, or love story. Readers are attracted to this text because it makes them feel and remember what it’s like to be a junior in high school. This story is a powerful example of what literature is for. It is designed to make readers think critically about their own experiences and discover more about the world around them. Eleanor and Park does this and so much more. It discusses complex issues that are real, painful, and unavoidable. It gives a voice to those that, like Eleanor, feel they have no hope.

Works Cited

Holmes, Linda. True Love, Book Fights, and Why Ugly Stories Matter. NPR. 18 September 2013. Online.

Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor and Park. Google E-book, 2013.