My Appreciation
By Jacqueline Wong 806
Rodman Philbrick’s Freak the Mighty is a book in which personalities have large contrast and in which friendship is full of adventure and imagination. The beauty of Max and Kevin’s friendship and their quests bring readers back to reread it. I first read it when I was eight or nine. I found Maxwell Kane’s perspective interesting despite his negative personality. In nursery school, he met Kevin- an intelligent but disabled boy with a love for quests, words, and technology. Max met Kevin again years later, developing an adventurous friendship which led them often to danger.
Max is a boy with low self-esteem and a negative opinion of the world. He is closed up from the world around him because of what happened many years earlier, causing people to judge him before they even try to know him better. Yet Kevin looks beyond Max’s intellect, seeing what is laid behind his negative attitude. Together they go on dangerous quests to restore a piece of property to a fair maiden, imprison a dangerous man, and so much more. Along the way, Max starts to open up as he finds happiness. But happiness is not enough to bring him to complete openness and a good change in personality. It is not until he loses his only friend does he see the true meaning of life. There is always hope- even through something as terrible as loss.
I tend to connect most with Max, because I see the world’s darkness- the negative side of everything. “I don’t know if this makes sense, but for a long time I felt like I was a balloon and somebody had let the air out of me. I didn’t care if I ever got the air back, because what does it matter if we’re all going to die in the end?” (p158) In this part, Max has lost hope of any good in the world. He has lost so much more than air. I often believe there is no hope and no good in the world. In this excerpt, it makes me think of my own thoughts of death. Sometimes I think of suicide. Is there a way better than ending your life before your time comes or is death the only way which can end your misery? Would death not be pleasure if you suffered so much? In my religion, it says those who repent and believe in Jesus go to Heaven- the land of plenty and God’s kingdom. But life is a gift. There is both good and bad to life. Life does have meaning even if it is limited.
I am also an outcast like Max. Both of us have our comfort zone which we lock ourselves in, afraid to go beyond the borders. This causes us to make ourselves into outcasts and prisoners in our own worlds. “There’s a place I go inside my head sometimes. It’s cool and dim in there and you float like a cloud- no you are a cloud, the kind you see in the sky on a windy day, the way they keep changing except you can’t really see it changing…. What I do is lie on the floor under my bed, where you can just barely see the bedsprings and stuff because it’s so dark, and before long I’m somewhere else, sort of floating, and it’s so cool and empty in there, you don’t have to think about anything. You’re nothing, you’re nobody, nothing matters, you’re not even there.” (p21) Max is in his own world. This is when he closes up right after the Fair Gwen- Kevin’s mother- runs off with Kevin, believing Max was going to hurt him. Part of the reason we are afraid to go beyond the walls of our own prisons is because of what others think of us- how people see us. People see Max as a large, brainless brute (Even his grand-parents!). We somehow listen so much to their words, we start to believe them. This is why Max and I have never been good at making friends. Why I have never been able to join people’s laughter or fun. Closing ourselves up to the world often leads to consequences.
Often, there are many sides to us. Just like Max is a caring person beneath his attitude, I am a much more good-natured and kind person in my head. “We run in and Freak [Kevin] is leaning back in his chair making this wheezing sound, panting real fast, and his eyelids and flickering…. I run out in the street and start waving my hands and jumping up and down so they’ll [ambulance] know where to stop and I keep running back in the house to check on things….” (p146) People around us cannot really see, but there are many good people beyond their outer personalities. Max is one of those people. You can tell by how much he cares about Kevin. He panicked when he saw Kevin wheezing.
As you read, you will find the wonders friendship can do to open your mind to others….
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