Tripp Lake Blog

Blog: 1. What does the author mean when she says on p. 244 "her face a mixture ...mastery"? 2. What is the "way forward"? (246)

In Tripp Lake from Swink the main characters name is Lauren Slater, 10, who goes to a summer camp in Maine where she learns that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to. The story twists and turns when the relationship between her and her mother outcomes the buried feelings that she has toward her mother as well as her own fears that she realizes. From her time at camp she overcomes fears, learns to understand and deal with her emotions and faces mature issues and lessons that teach her to just keep moving forward.

1. On page 244, I think the author meant that Lauren's face showed her feelings of being scared that she is in the air, on the horse but also that she likes the adrenaline feeling she has. The mixed emotions are a part of life that one must be able to deal with, the feeling of being scared that it gives her and the excited feeling is just another thing that Lauren must learn to move past by dealing with them. With these two emotions she is having, she has created what is needed to thrive and succeed at something that she is interested in being good at. To gain maximum experience and understanding of the skill, to have excitement but fear is the way to perfect the skill. To control those feelings means that she can focus on that and continue furthering her life
which helps her overcome her fears that she has because of her mom, enabling her to really start her own life instead of living her mother.

2. On page 246, I think that the "way forward" is facing everything she has been fighting and dealing with it by realizing its not the end of the world. Even if she does not succeed she should continue trying until she succeeds. It's that she can go forward by using what she has learned and continue to overcome her fears as well as any obstacle just like her with the horse. Lauren shows this when trying to get the horse to 'get over it' by using what ever means possible, the whip, in order to motivate her horse to just face fears which was what she was trying to do herself because the horse was sensing her fears and hesitating to continue like Lauren. She had to find the way forward and continue down the way that leads forward.