TRJ Writer's Craft #1

A couple times throughout the book, we see some very descriptive writing by Chaim Potok. One time is when the author describes the old man through the eyes of Sin Gyu, the boy. The writer portrays the old man with “brown wrinkled features; dark angry eyes; wisps of graying beard on his upper lip and chin; a long stemmed pipe held between clenched teeth. His [the old man’s] body small, thin, wiry, even in the waded coat. A small ugly old man, head covered by a cap with ear flaps. A large mole on his left cheek.” From this descriptive passage, the reader really receives a visual image of the old man. Also, later on in the book, the reader gets to comprehend the characters better and see their feelings and type of person they are through their actions and thoughts. Additionally, Chaim Potok also describes the boy and woman, which helps us picture even better how they helped and were heroic in hard times.
I thought that this descriptive writing helped in underscoring the theme of this book. The theme of this book is about being a hero during hard times, so having a good picture of the characters assisted the reader to see how the characters would show heroism. From the descriptions like wiry, it can be implied that even if the old man is small, he is capable of doing some hard work. I thought the old man was brave in the fact that he did not give up on the boy, another mouth to feed, even though he wanted to. Even though he did not like the idea of taking another person with him, he did not force his wife to let the boy die.