Language Arts Mid Term Paper. Compare And Contrast Paper Example

Resilience is shown in all different kinds of books in any genre. In Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang and The Odyssey by Homer, both texts have resilience shown in the characters. Even though characters in each text go through very different challenges and obstacles, they both show lots of resilience. Odysseus and all the teammates on Bishop O’dowd’s basketball team show different kinds of resilience throughout both stories. 

In Dragon Hoops, Gene Luen Yang writes about a highschool basketball team and their journey to winning their first state championship. Not only does he include them winning, he also shows all the times they made it to the championship but lost, he also shows all the obstacles they faced to get there. Instead of giving up, they kept pushing and practicing no matter how hard or tiring it was. The O'dowd Dragons show the reader it is very important to follow your dreams and never give up until you get there.  They were resilient and never gave up on their dreams even after so many losses and challenges to overcome.

The Odyssey is very different from Dragon Hoops, even though both texts have characters showing resilience, the characters in each text have personalities that are very different. The Odyssey follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. The war lasts for 10 years and his journey home also lasts 10 years. He faces lots of challenging obstacles along the way, he outsmarts a cyclops, but upsets Poseidon, the cyclops's father and the ruler of the sea. He also runs into a bunch of sirens who kill a few of his men. Odysseus faces lots of other different obstacles like losing all of his men in a whirlpool but he never gave up until he restored his kingdom and was reunited with his wife. 

Both of these stories show lots of resilience in different  ways. The O'Dowd Dragons and Odysseus both show the reader that having resilience is an important part to reach their goals and dreams. Resilience is a key component to being successful because the journey to getting to a goal is not going to be easy. There will be lots of obstacles and challenges on the way, if the reader doesn't have resilience, they would be giving up on a dream so easily just because of one little thing that didn't go as planned.