Ashfall Prompt #2

AJ Pendharkar

Ms. Morrell

English IV Honors

October 8, 2012

iRead Journal Prompt #2 for Ashfall

            When Alex went to his Cedar Falls Taekwondo academy, he was looking for weapons.  The author writes “Every one of the schools edged weapons was gone.” (Mullen, 66) After searching through the school for any weapon, he found his teacher’s Bo staff.  He grabbed it and took it with him.  Alex was trained how to fight and defend himself with the Bo staff.  The Bo staff is a weapon.  It is “six feet long, an inch and a quarter thick at the middle, and tapered to one inch at each end.  Stained a deep chocolate color.  The varnish was worn in the middle of the staff from hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours of practice.” (Mullen, 67)  I think he feels very confident having this weapon with him.

            Alex woke one day to the sound of breaking glass.  He had slept in a gas station and was surprised to hear this sound.  He peaked through a small hole and saw that a family had come into the gas station and was rummaging through the debris looking for food.  It was a man, a woman, and two small kids.  He tried to stay out of sight, but the man spotted Alex and approached him.  Alex sensed the man was trying to take his backpack because the man kept looking at it.  Alex stood up and kept a strong grip on his Bo staff.  The man asked Alex if there was any food in the backpack.  Alex told him he had no food, but the man kept approaching.  The woman kept telling the man to stop.  “He’s only a kid!” (Mullen, 113)  Alex thought about trying to run, but he didn’t think he could turn his skis and get moving fast enough, so he took his Bo staff and, with a two handed grip, started to whirl it around his head.  It was quite difficult on skis.  Alex thought this would scare the man, but he still kept approaching.  Alex kept spinning the staff and smacked it into the roofing.  This stopped the man.  He went back to the woman and kids and started to search for food in the rubble.  Alex slowly skied away. I think that if Alex didn’t have the Bo staff, he wouldn’t have given a confident, powerful, fighting stance.  The Bo staff helped him stand his ground and not give into the request of the man.  Without the staff, Alex would not have acted like a fighter. 

            I felt relieved when Alex found the Bo Staff.  Although it may not have looked like it, the Bo Staff actually gave Alex confidence in what he was doing.  First off, he wouldn’t have been confident enough to kill Target if he had to do it bare handed.  I feel as the story went on, Alex grew to the Bo Staff.  He protected it as if it were a human; in his eyes it was the key to living.  The Bo Staff was a very influential item to Alex, and if he never found it I don’t think he would have found his Uncle’s farm alive.

Works Cited

Mullen, Mike.  Ashfall.  Terre Haute: Tanglewood Pub, 2011.  Print.