Steps To Survival

Essay by onvinhtanCollege, UndergraduateA, October 2004

download word file, 3 pages 5.0

Downloaded 38 times

People's dream is to be safe and free in this new land of milk and honey, they risk their lives by heading north to the United State. Maria, Julia and Oscar carry hope for a new life; they struggle to escape from the darkness of El Salvador. They squeeze themselves in a crate as the pain rises after each jerk of the truck. "Julia's shoulders rocked back and forth as she pressed Oscar's face into my chest, and the pain in my bent neck spread to my head and a cross my shoulders" (2). Eventually, they are able to overcome the hardship and arrive in Chicago. When they arrive, the hope for the land full of milk and honey vanished. They have to work incredibly hard in order to survive. Maria, Julia and Oscar use many tools and resources to survive in Fran Leeper Buss's, The Journey of the Sparrows. The most important tools and resources they find are luck, perseverance, and compassion from others

Maria, Julia, and Oscar have enormous amounts of luck. Fran Leeper Buss does a great job of showing the readers how luck has come to help Maria, Julia, and Oscar. They nearly died in the crate. Maria, Julia, and Oscar ran out of food and water; moreover, the fear of being deported rises as they cross the border. The truck suddenly stops at a checkpoint. Luckily they can not be seen: "finally, the men's voice moved farther away, and the engine of the truck in which we were hidden started up again. Then the familiar voice man shouted in Spanish, "they're gone it's clear" (2). Luck continues to heal them as the novel goes on. When Maria, Julia and Oscar arrive in Chicago, Maria has to get food from the church daily.