Ethan Barton

Mrs. Roskamp

LA, 8C

26 October 2015

Theme Writing

My theme that I am writing about is overcoming fear and being brave. The book I am writing about is the Ranger’s Apprentice book one, The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan. The plot of the books are that the dark lord Morgarath is planning to take over Araluen. His first step is to use his kalkara assassins, they’re massive, terrifying beasts that can paralyze someone by making eye contact with them, to kill those that stopped him on his first attempt. The Kalkara’s fur is so thick that it can stop broadswords Their only weakness is that the stuff that sticks the fur together, in an armor better than chain mail, is highly flammable. Will uses this to his advantage to kill one of them, overcoming a massive amount of fear. The lesson I learned from these books is that anyone can be brave, but you can’t have bravery without fear.

Halt shows a lot of courage in his “battle” against the Kalkara. When they face the Kalkara towards the end of book one, Halt is the main target of the Kalkara and also the one that tracks them down with his two former apprentices Gilan and Will. At one point he is hiding from them with a broken bow and a only the smaller of his two knives, but he never gives up, he keeps on trying to stay alive, his will to live never fading. He keeps on attempting to ward them off with fire and even though he know that he stands no chance against them. He’s really scared of them because they’re bent on killing him. But that doesn’t stop him, he keeps on fighting.

Another time when courage was displayed was when Will shot the flaming arrow that took out the last Kalkara. What happens is that the Kalkara has badly wounded Baron Arald and he Paralyzed Sir Rodney and is about to kill Halt. Thinking quickly, he covers an arrowhead with pine sap and lights it on fire. He then shoots it at the Kalkara and the monster dies in flames and everyone is saved, for the moment. His fear was that the assassin was about to kill his mentor, father figure, and arguably his best friend at this point. He had to overcome that fear and not just stand by and take it down despite his doubts and fears.  

My final example of courage in the book is when they took down the wild boar. The gist of what happened was Halt was teaching Will about tracking and identifying hoofprints and footprints. They found an odd set of hoofprints that Halt identified as a wild boar that could be really bad news for the surrounding countryside. They were getting ready to kill it and it went in a rage and nearly killed them all but Will showed great courage and killed it.

In conclusion, this is a very good book.