Cole's Symbolism

Author’s Note: This is my text analysis piece and I tried to make connecting within this piece.

Anger raging within Cole because someone snitched on him. In the book “Touching Spirit Bear” by Ben Mikaelsen there is a lot of symbolism and foreshadowing. Some examples of symbolism in this piece are the spirit bears fur, the rain after Cole gets mauled by the spirit bear and the “ancestor rock”.

Although talking about what symbolism is in this book I will explain what the symbolism means in this story. The color of the spirit bear’s fur is white and the bear is supposed to be peaceful. Also the rain after Cole gets mauled stands for sadness but it also stands for renewal because after this Cole becomes more peaceful because he realized that he can’t solve all of his problems from violence. Another piece of symbolism is Cole rolling the “ancestor rock” down the hill is suppose to represent him letting go of his anger everyday.

Even though the symbolism in this piece is interesting don’t forget about the foreshadowing. One example of foreshadowing is Cole seeing spirit bear because Cole thinks the spirit bear will attack him. Another is Garvey helping Cole after he burned the first cabin down because that should have been Cole’s only chance but Garvey believed that Cole could still prove himself.

All in all there is a lot of symbolism and foreshadowing in this book. The author did a good job at adding lots of symbolism and foreshadowing. Although I did not analyse every single piece of symbolism in this book, the ones that I talked about were the ones I thought were important.