The Weight of All Things by Sandra Benítez | Teen Ink

The Weight of All Things by Sandra Benítez

October 28, 2013
By mchammer BRONZE, Golden, Colorado
mchammer BRONZE, Golden, Colorado
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Soldiers stand, victims killed, the people of war are affected every day by the events that occur in everyday life. The Weight of All Things by Sandra Benítez shows these struggles through the main character named Nicholás de la Virgen Vera. Nicholás fights through the struggles of war and people and things help him through each day of the war. The Weight of All Things gives us a new perspective of war through Nicholás’s eyes. It puts the reader into his shoes and lets them live through his struggles. It has many good qualities including emotion, loyalty, and recovery.

Nicholás is on a emotional rollercoaster during the historical fiction book. The emotion drags the reader through hard times and good times. At the start of the book Nicholás is depressed because of his mothers death. As the book moves on more events occur that help Nicholás become more confident.“He walked with the might of a lion, with the heart of a lamb” (Benítez 235). By the end of the book he is more confident than he was before and it shows the reader how a boy moves into manhood. War has affected Nicholás obviously because of his mothers death but also emotionally, one example of this is meeting so many new people that help him or sometimes hurt him. This can help him move on and become more confident as more events occur. The emotional roller coaster that Nicholás rides makes this book the book that it is.

Loyalty plays a huge role in the book, and makes it a lot better. Nicholás is loyal to a lot of characters in this book and even some of his enemies. When he is captured he works for his enemy even if they are his enemy, this shows his loyalty to people and adds a good quality to the book.Throughout the whole book Nicholás is loyal to the people he loves. This includes his mother especially when she dies. He keeps some of her possessions to remind himself who he is loyal to and who he loved the most. The reader is always wondering who he will be loyal to next and keeps them on the edge of their seat throughout the entire book. When he is reunited with the people he loves the emotion is added with the loyalty to create a strikingly powerful written section in the book.
Nicholás goes through a lot of tragedies during the book and recovery is very important in Nicholás’s life. One tragedy is when his mother dies, he is a emotional wreck. “Nicholás felt the weight of her push suddenly against him and then he felt her go limp.” (4). This quote shows the tragedy that he has gone through and the rest of the book describes his recovery through different events. When Nicholás reunites with Tata it is the turning point in the book because of recovery because he is with a part of his family. From this perspective of the book it can be difficult to recovery from a tragedy because more tragedy occurs in everyday life. By the end of the book he is able to find a piece of tragedy and break it apart and throw it out of his life. This shows how he recovers and it makes the book much more prominent.
The Weight of all Things is a great book for many reasons including emotion, loyalty, and recovery. These reasons make the book so much more interesting for the reader because they add a lot of excitement and keeps the reader guessing. The reader is always on the edge of their seat while diving through the story of Nicholás de la Virgen Vera. Emotion shows how nicholás fight through tragedy and flies through the great times of his life. Loyalty keeps the reader guessing on who he will be loyal to next and how he will show it. Recovery shows how a kid can go through a war scene but still recover from the tragedies. As Nicholas lives through all the events of war he shows all three of these in the end of the book, when he tore the gun apart and threw it out of his life and into the river. This ends the book and summarizes it still having a cliffhanger to keep you guessing what happens next.


Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.