A Hope In The Unseen Essay, Research Paper
In this Story A Hope in the Unseen we see a young man that has great deal of potential, that is stuck inside a school where it is hard for him to advance as far as a normal student in normal circumstances would. Our main character, Cedric, is constantly put up against odds that are against him, yet he strives to achieve so much in his life. We watch him in this book go through many triumphs and failures that most of us would never imagine having to deal with in our own lives.
Cedric main supporter throughout his life is his mother Barbara. She is a very religious and caring mother that has also had many hardships in her life, including the birth of Cedric due to the fact that Cedric s father wanted her to have an abortion. She is the person that always helps Cedric to find the path he needs to be on when Cedric himself lost his way. Another large supporter early on in this book was Cedric s science teacher Mr. Taylor. Mr. Taylor realized the great potential Cedric had academically, but he also knew that Cedric frequently set his goals too high for even himself. Mr. Taylor also encouraged Cedric s growing knowledge by supplementing Cedric with after school tasks and challenges.
When Cedric is accepted into the MITES program at MIT after he applied and prayed that he would get in, he put all his focus and hopes in the fact that MIT was the school for him. After getting to MIT and realizing the great difficulty and challenge it presented him, he quickly became discouraged and decided that he did not in fact want to attend MIT. After he returned to Washington D.C. after his MIT visit, Justice Clarence Thomas asked to have a meeting with Cedric in order to discuss his goals. Justice Thomas was very straightforward with Cedric and told him how he felt about Cedric s choices regarding colleges, although some of what Justice Thomas told Cedric was not what Cedric wanted to hear.
Once Cedric choose to attend Brown University he became worried that people would think less of him because of his poor lifestyle. Because of these feeling Cedric asks his mother if she would mind renting an Infinity Q45 to take Cedric to school in to impress the people there. We find Cedric to have many problems with appearance and racial issues in this book, especially when he gets to Brown. Cedric often will blame problems he has with others on the fact that they are white or did not grow up with his background, which limits him to the number of people he can talk to and be friends with. Cedric often has problems with his roommate Ben. Most of the problems they have are not based on race but Cedric eventually tries to turn their arguments into a racial battle. I believe the reason for this is Cedric s lack of privacy in college, compared to having his own room at his home in Washington D.C.
After competing with his racial battles in college for several months he decided to write a poem in which he described how he felt and how he wished to change. By writing this poem he was able to rekindle his dwindling relationships with many people, including a girl named Chiniqua. She was a nice girl that Cedric found quite attractive, and once Cedric got up the courage to ask her out on a date she accepted. This was one of the points in the book where I felt I could relate to Cedric, because all guys have butterflies in their stomachs on a first date.
After getting through a full year at Brown Cedric returned home to his mother and found there to be many problems at home he was unaware of. His mother had allowed herself to go almost 3000 dollars in debt and she never told Cedric about it. Cedric felt terrible about this because he spent some of the money his mother sent him on frivolous items he did not necessarily need. Another hardship for Cedric when he got home was trying to initiate some kind of a relationship with his father.
I believe this book to be a fairly interesting book and would probably recommend it to a friend to read. The only thing I disliked about the book was my lack of understanding of Cedric s position. I have never been in a poor family nor have I ever had to worry about financial earnings, and due to that I can not imagine living in a life where all the money you had came from such a small income. I do believe that the author did portray the hard and difficult environment that Cedric grew up in with very good detail.