Shattered – Opinion Paper

Shattered – Opinion Paper

Shattered – Opinion Paper

        The novel Shattered is written by Eric Walters and is a book that focus’ on helping others. This story highlights the experience of a 15 year old boy, Ian, he is required to complete community service hours for his high school civics class. He finds a placement at “The Club” that is a soup kitchen. Ian meets and assists a man named Sarge that is a former UN Peacekeeper. Ian ends up helping him in the end. I can prove this is a book about helping others because Jack also known as Sarge works for the Peacekeeping missions in Rwanda and he helps and saves civilians there. Ian helps Jack; a street person, and Ian also helps out at “The Club” a soup kitchen. My final reason is the Mac the owner of the soup kitchen help Ian by giving Ian a volunteer job; he helps all the street people and he works at and supports the soup kitchen. Thus, I do agree that the book Shattered is a book that is focuses on helping others.

        Earlier in the novel we see that Jack was a Peacekeeper in Rwanda and that he saved many people. This is to say that he was saving people from being attacked and we see that he was helping them. He was in the Peacekeeping missions for 24 years and we assume that he helped many people in those 24 years. It was hard for Jack to see the things that happened in countries like Rwanda, Haiti, and Africa are just a few. It is also ever tougher for Jack to talk about the tragedies that happened, but he states,

“Something’s are better talked about. It wasn’t even like I’d forgotten about it… It’s not like I’ll ever forget about it (Walters 161)”

In the words of Jack, we learn that the memories, sights, and trauma has never left him. Jack feels it is better to talk about these things than to just leave them alone and never go back to these memories again. Jack has helped many people in his career in the military and he has even helped out Ian by finding out who he actually is. Specifically he has helped Ian by talking to him about what happened in Rwanda, and he also helped by talking to Ian he might want to make Ian talk to others about what happened and make a chain reaction.    

Another reason why this novel is based on helping others is, Ian helps out at “The Club.” Ian waits and waits to find a placement for his high school civics class community hours. He finally finds a placement at “The Club” and he later finds out by surprise that it is a soup kitchen on the run-down side of town. He arrives at the soup kitchen as all of the street people are all standing outside waiting to enter right before the dinner service begins, and not one of the street people made eye contact with Ian. Later in the novel we find out that Ian enjoyed helping at the soup kitchen Mac uses a term and he says that Ian got ‘high’ on helping.

During Ian’s walk to the soup kitchen he walks through the park and gets stopped my three thugs that try to take his coat, shoes and other belongings. Out comes a guy named Sarge and scares off the three thugs and saves Ian from getting hurt. Ian later helps Sarge through all of his struggles.

Ian provided Sarge also known as Jack someone to talk to and tell his thoughts to. Sarge was also a resource to Ian because for Ian’s civics class he had to interview someone that was or is in the military. Ian interviewed Sarge because he was in the military as a peacekeeping personnel. Sarge received his nickname because he was a Sargent in the military.