Rasedul Hossain Rahat
English 110
23rd March, 2015
Differences between child and adult Darin
Along with time everyone grow up and start experiencing challenges and hurdles in daily life. A lot of us overcomes this barriers of life easily while others have a hard time facing these challenges and overcoming them. People’s life is full of hardships and tragedy but they should not give up in life and stay behind worrying about that tragedy. Because worrying about something never helps. One should focus on overcoming the obstacles in life and learn to resolve the problem and continue to move forward. For Darin Strauss, the accident of Celine Zilke stood before him like a barrier which cannot be overcome. Darin faced a tragedy unlike many other at the young age of eighteen when life was about to take him to a different phase. The accident of Celine turned his happy life as a teenager into a more depressed one in which he keep on blaming himself for the death of Celine. As time passes he continued to turn into a young man becoming stronger and realizing that it was not his fault which he used to think before. Before a month of high school graduation Darin involved himself in an incident which changed his life forever. When he was driving back with his friends on his father’s car he involved himself in an accident which resulted in the death of a teenage girl from his school named Celine Zilke. Normally after an accident the people involved check on each other or they ask for help and try to resolve the situation step by step. But in case of Darin it was totally different and unexpected. He was about to move into college life and still he behaved immaturely and avoided all the necessary steps necessary to save Celine’s life after hitting her at a tremendous speed. The first thing that crossed his mind was, “I thought in terms of broken arms and getting in trouble with my parents” (Strauss 7).This shows how immature and worriless he was about Celine. He was less concerned about the girl’s life and rather he was thinking that he will get in trouble with his parents which was more important for him. This shows that how selfish he is and he was not at all thinking about Celine. Most embarrassingly he even portrayed himself as the victim as two young ladies from a different car walked up to him. He acted in such a way covering his face that the two attractive girls felt pity for him instead. He enjoyed that moment of artificial emotion rather than worrying about the life that he pushed in the brink of death (Strauss 10). While Darin was caring about his own life and thinking what will be the consequence for this incident, Celine was fighting with death. No one was beside her to in her tragic moment. Even her parents were out of town. Darin should have visited Celine instead, offering as much help as possible in order to save Celine’s life. But rather he spend time focusing on himself. At that moment his life worth more than Celine. He was also influenced by his parents to let go of the situation and he acted accordingly to his parents. He went to another part of the town to watch movies instead to relief himself from the bad situation that he has created (Strauss 17). This shows that Darin is a weak and cowardly person. Instead of denying her parents he chooses to escape the situation by going to the theatre. Darin also has the tendency to accept what people says to him. This shows another characteristic of him which tells that he cannot decide for himself and accepts any decision made by another person. In the funeral when he shows up to visit Celine’s family, her mother tells him,” But I want you to remember something. Whatever you do in your life, you have to do it twice as well now. Because you are living for two people” (Strauss 56). Darin knew that it was not his fault that Celine died in that accident. But still he accepted what Celine’s mother told him to do. This shows that he is still immature and can be manipulated by
