A Week in the Woods

After spending the pivotal, character-building night alone in the barn, Mark makes the important decision to open up at school in an attempt to make friends and win his teachers over, even though he will find it an uphill battle, given that he has already made a bad first impression. The decision to engage more fully at school is an important step in Mark’s journey Redefining Manhood and embracing maturity. To succeed in this new endeavor, he must try Confronting and Overcoming Fears of building new attachments that he may someday lose. Likewise, he must risk The Dangers of Misjudgment from his fellow classmates and his teachers alike, given that he is already seen as being “other” because of his wealth and his out-of-town status. Fortunately, he is able to make friends right away, but his teachers display their own issues with misjudgment when they refuse to accept his new attempts to engage with their lessons in a positive manner. To further develop the story’s rising action, Clements intensifies the antagonistic dynamic that Mr. Maxwell continues to create, for he is particularly harsh with Mark and purposely avoids calling on him in class. He also barely speaks to the boy when Mark turns in his permission form to join the camping trip. Ultimately, it will take a dramatic night of survival on the mountainside for Mr. Maxwell to truly realize how poorly he has misjudged Mark, but despite this harsh treatment, Mark still loves science class and appreciates everything he learns from Mr. Maxwell. In a demonstration of his own growing maturity, he refuses to get angry or disengage from class when Mr. Maxwell openly ignores him. Instead, he merely hopes that when he shows Mr. Maxwell his outdoor survival skills, Mr. Maxwell will see him in a new light. With these developments, it is clear that Mark looks up to Mr. Maxwell as a strong male role model; as he continues to learn, he also finds ways of Redefining Manhood and his own coming-of-age journey, recognizing that he can learn a great deal from his teacher’s environmental knowledge. However, because Mr. Maxwell puts Mark in the position of being judged, it is up to Mark to somehow get through to him, and in this way, Mark and Mr. Maxwell will demonstrate The Interchangeable Roles of Teacher and Student.

For most of Mark’s life, he felt as if he didn’t belong anywhere, for he was never able to live anywhere long enough to build a life or form meaningful relationships with anyone. Mark is not even able to relate fully to his own parents, given that they are gone so often. Instead, he must learn to spend most of his time on his own. Leon and Anya are loving and attentive nannies, but they cannot replace the parents that Mark needs. When Mark’s parents do come home, they only stay for a few days, and Mark must soon say goodbye to them again as they leave him to deal with his own challenges and try Confronting and Overcoming Fears on his own. His entire life is defined by this state of temporariness, and it is an issue that contributes to his problems with Mr. Maxwell and grows to affect much broader concerns. Mark’s lonely lifestyle also demonstrates that being wealthy is not necessarily the easy, carefree form of existence that Mr. Maxwell imagines it to be; instead, monetary wealth comes with its own unique set of problems, particularly for the children involved.