American writer and teacher Jack Kornfield once wrote, “There is beauty to be found in the changing of Earth’s seasons, and an inner grace in honoring the cycles of life.” He meant there is majesty in changing, living and dying. This lesson is really valuable for those who have faced and suffered with wars and conflicts throughout their lives. In both the novels Towers Falling, by Jewell Parker Rhodes, and The Last Cherry Blossom, by Kathleen Burkinshaw, this important message can be seen in divergent ways. Rhodes’ novel portrays the life of Dèja, a 10-years-old girl who lives in Avalon Family Shelter with her hard worker Mama, her booming siblings, and her unemployed sick Pop. While studying about the 9/11 terrorist attack at school, Dèja finally understands why her dad is always sad, sick and away from the family. On the other hand, Burkinshaw’s book tells the story of Yuriko, a 12-years-old Japanese prosperous girl who lives in Hiroshima with her family in 1945, the end of The Second Great War. After the explosion, Yuriko experiences losses as well as changes in her life. Although the money and the power Yuriko’s family owns helped her feel less of the impact of the war, Dèja’s family suffered a lot with the lack of money. Both main characters and narrators are kids, which emphasizes the effects the historical events had on their age range.
Even though the lessons readers get from the stories are different, they can be interpreted similarly. Both of them are about new beginnings and how the past and the present can make people look for a better future and fight for it. In Rhode’s book, readers can see how history is alive and how studying the past helps them understand the present and work for a better future. In the beginning of the story, Dèja is furious about her Pop being sick all the time and not working to help their family. When she discovers that her dad worked at the World Trade Center and that he was inside the towers during the 9/11 attack, she understands better how affected he is and how she needs to help him get over this traumatized past and focus on his family and the future. This shows how studying and understanding the past helped Dèja on comprehending Pop’s situation and old traumas, on assisting him to recognize how he is blameless for what happened and to help him recover, seeing the fact that he survived the attack as a chance for a new restart to enjoy life with his family. In the same way, The Last Cherry Blossom’s lesson also mentions new beginnings and cycles. Yuriko asks what would happen if they lost the war. Her dad answers that “I will keep my family safe at all costs… you are my life and I will give mine to save yours,” and she says she doesn’t want to be there without him. Then, Papa brings up that “it is how life is, Yuriko-chan. In our lives, we must experience both beginnings as well as endings. It is like the season changing after the last cherry blossom falls.” It’s clear that Papa knew something could happen to him, and he wanted to keep Yuriko safe and prepared for it, even though she didn’t think something could happen. That’s why he shows her that life is a cycle, and that when a door closes, a window opens. It means that everything that happens in a human’s life, there is a purpose, and there is an opportunity for a new beginning.
Throughout both stories, it’s clear how the more money and social power you have, the less affected you are by big conflicts. Unlike Yuriko who is prosperous, Dèja goes through a lot of economic problems that makes her suffer more with the effects of the 9/11 attack than Yuriko did with WW2’s harms. After the towers fell, Dèja’s Pop was unemployeed and really sick. They have never been rich, but after 9/11 and the birth of three kids, Pop couldn’t hold a job for more than a couple of months. He told Yuriko about the “crippling smoke. Pulverized concrete” which is what “reminds me it’s inside me, what’s inflaming my lungs,” the reason why he coughs so much. He was not only physically, but extensively mentally affected by the attack. Pop explains how the dust from the towers that he keeps in a bag “reminds me, too, of how worthless I was. Am. How I couldn’t protect my work family. Not then. How I can’t protect my family now. Look at this place,” referring to the shelter room they live in. The pain in his voice while admitting how he feels incapable shows how the lack of money deepened the effects of the attack. If they had money, he could be well treated, and he wouldn’t feel worthless. Neither would they live in a shelter in such poor conditions like they do. The harms of 9/11 would be extensively reduced to Pop and his family if they just had good life conditions. On the other hand, Yuriko’s suffering with the effects WW2 had on her life and family were minimized because of how rich they were. While Déja barely had a home, Yuriko lived in a mansion with her family and her Papa, who was the newspaper’s owner. After the explosion in Hiroshima, when her dad died, Yuriko and Sumiyo, her lovely step-mother, had a lot of help on reconstructing the house, since Papa was very powerful and respected in the city. While a great number of workers were reconstructing her house, Yuriko and Sumiyo moved to a house next to her uncle’s. Then, the girl went to live and study on a full-time high school program. Yuriko always had greater chances and possibilities for her future than Déja just because of the money she owned and the influence her Papa had. While all the other citizens had lost their homes and had little but any help to reconstruct it, she didn’t even have to pay for it. Even though she had lost family members and friends, her future was not ruined, and she wasn’t homeless like most children that lived in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
Likewise, in both novels, readers follow the events through kids’ perspectives, which makes them understand how this age range was affected by past conflicts. In Towers Falling, Dèja narrates how it is to live in a shelter with a dad full of mental and physical health problems caused by an attack that she didn’t even know about. Every time the girl asks about what happened on 9/11, Pop answers in a desperate way, “you are too young to know about it. School should leave it alone.” This lack of information brings uncomfortable situations to Dèja. “I’m not dumb. But sometimes this school makes me feel I am,” referring to the fact that everybody knew about what happened on 9/11 except for her. Pop didn’t want his daughter to know about the attack. He thinks she’s too young to know about an event that traumatized him so badly that he will never be the same. And the fact that Dèja didn’t know everything that her friends did made her feel incapable and stupid. She felt less powerful and vulnerable when 9/11 was mentioned because she didn’t know what it was. As a kid, her dad decided it was not the time for her to know about the attack, what had harmed her at school and made her feel less intelligent than everybody else. Similarly, Yuriko also suffered a lot for being a child during WW2. Just as Dèja, she didn’t have much access to information of the war development since the government lied about it, and the few things her dad knew were not of her knowledge. That way, she didn’t know what to believe, who to trust, and if they were safe as the government said, or in risk as her Pop seemed to think. The lack of information led to an unprepared girl, who was not expecting what was about to happen. When the bomb exploded, she lost her house, her best friend and her Pop, the people she loved the most. She says that “I hurt so much from losing Papa and Machiko (her best friend) that I decided it was better not to get closer to anyone ever again. I would be alive, but I would not let myself feel any emotions.” Yuriko didn’t know what was really going on, because she was young and not mature enough to know it. So when the explosion happened, it was a greater impact than it would have been if only she knew what was happening. The pain of the loss of two family members made her lose the desire to live and enjoy life. War left a lovely and kind little girl orphaned and depressed in an irretrievable way, feeling guilty and willing to never be happy again.
The novels Towers Falling and The Last Cherry Blossom by Jewell Parker Rhodes and Kathleen Burkinshaw both are interconnected by a common lesson that means perseverance, power and hope for each human being, no matter what is happening and what they are going through. By studying what happened on 9/11, Dèja could understand her Pop and help him move on to new opportunities and a better future, in the same way that Yuriko understood that the end of a path may be the beginning of another after the explosion. Even though the main characters have learned similar lessons, the economical difference between them influenced the way they were affected by each event. While Yuriko didn’t have any problem with money and her future, Dèja’s family struggled a lot with missing cash, which made them live in a shelter. Also, the girls share the same age range, which makes readers understand how children were affected by conflicts in different ways. Dèja’s lack of information about the terrorist attack made her feel less powerful and intelligent than other kids at her age. War also took a lot from Yuriko, from her innocence to her family members that died during the explosion in Hiroshima. It’s important to highlight how all these internal and external conflicts contributed to build the importance of believing in new beginnings and second chances in the story. Everything that happens in people’s lives has a purpose; maybe they don’t understand it right now, or they don’t feel it is either right or fair, but there is a meaning behind it. People can see surviving as a bad, unfair chance or as a possibility to restart, to live for the ones who couldn’t and enjoy life in the best way they can.
