Summary
- Starts out with 3 boys and a father. The mother has died by a being hit by a car.
- The boys in age order are Gerry, Dylan and Ben. The point of view is from Ben's perspective.
- The whole family loves sailing.
- One day their dad comes home and tells them all that he bought a boat and they will sail the southern waters around the Bahamas.
- They all are not huge fans of this idea.
- Their father then said that he would home school them on the boat.
- They then sell their house and car and see the new boat named the Chrysalis.
- They set sail to the Bahamas.
- They sail around the Bahamas for a couple of months.
- Their Dad then cut his hand on a knife when he was trying to untangle seaweed. He then had a hard time doing daily tasks.
- A couple months later Ben was not woken up to take his last shift (they took shifts in the night). The next morning, when Ben went on the deck, his father was not there. The saftey harness was unlatched and on the deck. The saftey equipment was also missing.
- The boys then find a note that seems to be what Ben thinks is a suicide note.
- He thinks that thier father drowned himself.
- Then comes a storm, a VERY LARGE STORM.
- It lasts for days where the boys have to survive without sinking. It seems like it could not get any worse.
- They then wake up one day to find an island. They find it is a small island, but is land.
- They load all of the remaining supplies off of the now sinking boat to the island.
- They sleep for days on the island.
- They hunt for food and start to find things to eat and get clean water.
- Things turn out for the better until Dylan does not come home one night after searching for food. They then look for him and find him on a ledge off a cliff with a broken leg. This turns out to be a compound fracture.
- They get him back to the camp and Ben has to pull the bone back into Dylan's leg after he fainted multiple times. This woke him right back up.
- He starts to get better.
- It then turns infected.
- Dylan is to the point where the infection can be deadly.
- Ben has no choice but to use the dinghy and sail alone for days to find help.
- He then....
I WON'T SPOIL THE ENDING!!!!!!
Think of being on this boat for hours.
- Ben can be described as brave and a leader.
- Ben is Brave for multiple reasons.
- One is when he had to make it through the storm without sinking or drowning. He kept on going. He did all of the hard and difficult tasks, like tying down the sails.
- Another example of his bravery is when Dylan had broken his leg and he needed to push the bone back in. "The only way to do it was to pull suddenly and hard. I felt my self sweating." (Herlong 241) He knew he was going to bleed badly but he continued with it.
- Ben is also a leader.
- One example is again when he is on the boat in the storm and he appoints himself to do all of the difficult tasks.
- A final example is when he says " 'I'll take you to a doctor. Whatever it takes I will do it.' " ( Herlong pg. 248) This shows that he is leading the group and will do whatever it takes.
- Ben is also dynamic. At first he dislikes his dad and is mad at him for he thinks he tried to drown himself. For example "I read through it twice, then crushed the note into a tight ball." (Herlong pg. 131) This shows that he is angry at him.
- Towards the end he realizes that he could not be without his dad.
- The author uses flashback when the family is in the car driving to the boat, and flashes back to when they found out that his mom died. To show that he was flashing back he said "If I was not lucky then my mind would start playing the other tapes." (Herlong pg.7)
- This says that he may remember other times and flashback. This helped me understand the events before the boat.
- The author also used foreshadowing. For example Ben says before the story starts "One almost drowned. One almost went crazy. One fell off a cliff." (Herlong pg. 2)
- This helped give me a sneak peak into what the story is about and what the boys went through.
- The author also uses hyperbole when Ben has to pull the bone back in Dylan's leg. "The pain would kill him." (Herlong pg. 241)
- This would not actually kill him but would hurt extremely bad. This tells me how much it would hurt him.
- The Author also uses suspense quite often.
- "I held on with my left arm, and crushed the sail with my right." (Herlong pg.148)
- This was during a large storm and was a very dangerous task.
- The author also uses personification.
- "The thin grass hissed slightly in the wind." (Herlong pg.203)
- This shows how it felt and that there was a slight breeze.
- The main theme is If you stick together you can get through anything.
- An example to support this is "One almost drowned. One almost went crazy. One fell off a cliff." (Herlong pg. 2) They went through all of this and stuck together.
- Another example is " 'I'll take you to a doctor. Whatever it takes I will do it.' " ( Herlong pg. 248) Ben says here that they need to stick together ro survive.
You should read The Great Wide Sea because of the suspense and interesting characters.
There is always suspense in this book because you do not know if they will get saved. Suspense builds even from smaller things like the storm. For example "I held on with my left arm, and crushed the sail with my right." (Herlong pg.148) This is dangerous and he could easily go overboard.
All of the characters play a big part in this story. For example, Gerry, who is not even 6 got them food first. "Out dropped a fish- a huge fish..." (Herlong pg. 210) This was great because everybody got to help on the island. An other example is Dylan found a way to get clean water with a machine he read about.
The Great Wide Sea By: M.H. Herlong
Presentation By: Spencer Hatfield