Shaken by Eric Walters
This appears to be the cover of the novel-Shaken by Eric Walters.
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| A glimpse of the conditions many helpless individuals endured when the earthquake struck Haiti, on January 12, 2010. |
Shaken by, famous Canadian writer, Eric Walters is about a fifteen-year-old boy who traveled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti in order to help with a charity mission. The missionary trip took way on a flight from Toronto, Canada to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to help the less fortunate: build school, find clean water, and help the civilians of Port-au-Prince in any way, that they could. The main character, Joshua, who was confronted by poverty tried to find a means of peace and faith in the world as he had over-questioned himself if “it’s God will that things happen for a reason.” This moral conflict arose as his mother has passed on which barred him the thought of God’s existence. About a week into their stay in Haiti, an earthquake warning had been fired out in which surrounded the town. People were preparing for the thought of helplessness and distraught at the fact that their beautiful town would be destroyed. This book is based on the real-life earthquake that occurred in Haiti, in 2010. Eric Walters wished to reiterate the conditions and modern life struggle that families had to face when enduring the harsh realities of a disastrous earthquake. Walters' goal was to demonstrate through teenagers and young children that, indeed, faith in God will overcome any implication that occurs in your life.
WRITING STYLE:
This fascinating and or/action packed novel totals for thirty-five chapters. The writing style is very simple, yet very effective. When analyzing the writing style of this book, it is easy to follow as every event occurs chronologically to each other which helps the reader keep track of important details. For instance, through chapters one to thirty-five, it plays as if it was a movie, with minor flashbacks to the youth of the main character, Joshua . This is also helpful because it gives the reader past experience which relates to issues that currently exist in the novel. The novel is organized in chapters with approximately nine to fifteen pages per every chapter. This novel is written in first-person limited from the perspective of Joshua. For example, "I knew how much...", the I in the quote signifies that the novel is written in first-person. This novel does not appeal to any other character's thoughts and does not have a narrative tone to it.
KEY CONFLICTS:
Character vs Character: Joshua, the main character, argues with his father throughout the novel. A quote that can demonstrate this attitude toward his father is “… the biggest downside to all of this— my father coming along” (Shaken, ch. 1). Although, later in the novel shortly after his father disappears in the tragedies of the earthquake, Joshua soon realizes that grudges are not something to be held with, especially, with family. Joshua undergoes a dynamic change, as he states to his father “ it’s reassuring, that I know you’re fine…” (Shaken, ch 35).
Character vs. Self: The main conflict of the novel is Joshua fighting against his own self-demoralization. Joshua struggles with himself in terms of his decision-making abilities and faith life. Through three-quarters of the book, we see that Joshua doesn't believe in God’s unexplained powers. These trust issues are evident as he refers to God for the cause of his mother's death. Joshua openly describes God as a master "puppeteer" whom toys with people lives, mainly for the worse. When the earthquake hit, he states “ Was it God’s will to hurt these people?” (Shaken, ch. 12) . As you can see by this quote, he’s testing God’s existence, hence not putting his complete and utter trust in God. Also, throughout the novel we see that Joshua has a tough time making the decision between right or wrong. As Joshua sees his father and his sister disappear from underneath tragedies, he's generally seen making bad decisions without any sort of thought or remorse. For instance, he risked his life in a broken building, saving the life of a three children and a pet. This inner conflict is resolved by seeing the fruit of life that he has, all the while seeing others around him die. He then comes to the realization that, he is very fortunate to be alive and healthy.
Character vs Environment:
Physical— Joshua struggles with a catastrophic earthquake of a magnitude of 7.5 on the Richter scale. Throughout the duration of the earthquake, he also sees people dying from being captured beneath the rumbles of the earthquake, in an attempt to save them.
EFFECTIVENESS:
This book is very believable. When reading this book, the author makes you feel like you are incorporated in the book both physically and emotionally. The author describes the events, using various types of imagery such as auditory, visual, tactile and olfactory imagery. These various techniques are used to make the book very convincing and imaginable for the reader. This book is both engaging and interesting. It displays the plan to survive the detrimental effects when an earthquake hits and it also shows how to utilize what you have to fulfill a sense of happiness. This book is also engaging because it shows how a teenager can seek out a manly role to help his missionary and citizens in the community. For instance, he utilized weaponry such as machetes and a pocket knife as means of security to ward off the local civilians from stealing from the others. It was also very interesting to see the effect of harsh realities on the emotional level. People were constantly “crying for help” and or/"waiting for a God to save them.”
RATING:
In terms of rating, I would generously give this book a 5/5. I would certainly rate this the highest possible rating because from chapters 1-35, excitement and the action never appeared to stop. This novel never had that dull point where I wanted to stop reading. In fact, from a reader's perspective, I ‘over-dosed’ on reading which took me a total of seven hours to read the whole novel. Throughout the seven hours, I always desired to read more and more, as the action got a lot quicker emphasizing key deaths in the novel. I would recommend it to another reader in my age group as I believe the topics that pertain to this novel are what we sometimes think about, current day. For example, the belief in God, how to survive when things get tough, and the character that it takes to be a successful leader.
KEY THEMES:
The three themes that are present in this novel are ambition, appearance and reality, and fate and free will. Ambition is evident in this novel as Joshua utilizes force to achieve things that need to be done in order for survival. For example, he gets information out of a civilian with the use of weaponry, in which ultimately achieved what he wanted. He also utilizes weapons to maneuver around the dangerous town of Port-au-Prince, as sometimes he confronts multiple citizens who desire to take his materials such as his truck and his short supply of food. Appearance and reality is a major theme that is shown, as the people in the town including and members of his missionary trip, were fooled. Joshua appears to be bold and very sturdy as to what he faces, but emotionally he is the total opposite. Quite often, Joshua breaks down as he cannot handle the atrocities that had occurred. This included watching people die, seeing people decapitated, and the violence that took place. Another theme that is evident is fate vs. free will. Before venturing off to Haiti, Joshua lets his own fate decide how the trip is going to go. For instance, he constantly didn't contribute to any group discussion in the attempt to plan out the means of getting resources to construct the shacks and the well. After the earthquake in Haiti, Joshua let free will overcome him as he took charge of everything. Whether it was going outside at a certain time, controlling the amount of food consumption, or planning to rebuild the church. He was, ultimately the leader at the end. The key messages that the author displays in this novel is that; do your best and God will do the rest. Halfway through the novel, we see the ideology of the perfect relationship of God to humans. For instance, we start to see that Joshua realizes that God does anything and everything for a purpose.
EVALUATING CHARACTER:
My favourite character in the novel is Joshua because he can be seen as a dynamic character. Joshua undergoes a drastic change from the start to the end in which changed his whole outlook on life. For instance, in the beginning, he didn't care for helping the people in Haiti. At the end of the novel, Joshua surprisingly decided to stay in Haiti and live there with the friends he had made to essentially reconstruct everything that was damaged by the earthquake. Joshua is an exciting, and charismatic character to read about as change is very much prominent. Also, Joshua starts to become more confident in himself as he personifies a role that would belong to an alpha male in a lion heard, which was very interesting to read about. Joshua was unique in the sense that he would often show an emotional side and a very dark, savage side. For example, when he lost his father and sister, he was so keen on not trying to cry, all the while silently crying in his tent throughout the night. Although, Joshua was very ruthless in the sense that, he did whatever he could to try and find them. Furthermore, other characters did not have more than one quality. Other characters were flat characters who has one apparent quality that helped advance the plot. What made him stand out, was his desire for the common good of the group. A very selfless character was shown in desperate measures.
CONNECTION TO THE REAL WORLD:
This novel was directly derived from the horrific disasters inspired in Haiti. In 2010, Haiti was hit with an earthquake of 7.0 on the Richter scale. The book exaggerates the harsh conditions that occurred in Haiti, whether it was violence, lack of food, destruction, desperation, or death. This novel emulated the tragedy that happened, perfectly. It felt as though, you were in the book watching everything that took place. The influences that Eric Walters utilized while writing Shaken was that he wanted to show to the world the earthquake in Haiti, through the perspective of a teenage boy. Also, after the earthquake had occurred Eric Walter including his family had traveled to Haiti in order to receive information on what it was like. He then transferred the information, collected into the captivating book called "Shaken." 
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