"Winter" by John Marsden. Discuss the theme of Personal Growth in the Story. How does this affect Winter?

Essay by TasekJunior High, 8th grade March 2007

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The story, titled ‘Winter’, follows a sixteen year old girl named Winter on her path of personal growth. Her return to her home town of Warriewood, sparks a chain of cataclysmic events that cause Winter to explore the mysteries of her shadowed past; thus guiding her along her personal journey of growth. Winter starts as a person who hides her feelings and by the end of the story she is able to express herself. After discovering this new way of expressing herself, Winter begins to open up to people and form new relationships. During the entire course of the story Winter discovers the truth of her childhood. This creates a route of discovery and development that ends in her moving on and starting a new life in Warriewood.

Winters’s return to Warriewood causes her to hide her feelings and attempt to push everyone away from her. Throughout the story she learns to express her feelings.

In the beginning she experiences a large sense of loss and grief; a feeling which she had not felt so powerfully while living with her estranged and distant relatives, the Robinsons. She had lived with them since her parents tragic deaths, of which she knows little about. Going back and living in the homestead ignited the memories from her past, especially when she reads the poem hanging on her bedroom wall. While feeling so depressed, she finds she has no one to talk to; she has no one to help her express her pain. She thus bottles up her feelings. Her first meeting with Matthew shows how these emotions are then taken out on other people, as she yells at him with only a small amount of provocation. Throughout the story Winter learns that opening up and talking calmly to someone else, really helps her...