Her Mother

Upon finishing Tasting the Sky I was astounded by

Ibtisam’s mother. Sending her children to an orphanage because she could not be locked in the house with them seemed so cruel. Her sons were thin. They told her parents that in the winter it was so cold that they could not sleep. That they were frequently beaten by other boys. They told their parents of the neglect that they faced from the caretakers, never having enough food. Still their mother insisted that they could not move home. Not until their father pleaded and made “adequate” arrangement for her. I can see how her mother felt to a certain degree. However, at the health and well-being of her own children she chose herself. Throughout the book their mother constantly harps at them to be safe. Ibtisam reflects on how she remembers how her mother said to walk close to the wall, as to not be noticed. She also remembers her mother yelling at them if they got too close to the windows as soldiers were practicing outside. Yet, through all of this she sends them to an orphanage as if they had no parents. And here they have two. Not just one but two parents. Neither are sick. Both of good health and she pushed her small children into the orphanage. Ibtisam reflects on how she would wet the bed. How numerous children would wet the bed. Her mother let them be neglected by her own hand, so that she may have happiness. This I found shocking.

It Destroys a Country, it Destroys a Family, it Destroys a Soul

Tasting the Sky is a very poetic novel. The author captures the beauty amidst all the struggle. At the same time, she depicts the angst of war and tyranny on, not only lifestyles, but how these things begrudge the human soul. People were created to live freely. When placed in an environment where they lack liberty the soul cannot breathe; an individual cannot be. In the book, the narrator creates her own freedom, her post office box. This magical little box give her access to the entire world. She writes to people of all different ethnicities and countries. She is no longer the progeny of a war-torn country. She is just a mere resident of Ramallah. She writes of her day. She writes of the beautiful language of Arabic. She answers their questions and asks her own. In that post office box holds her small freedom.

The narrator also talks of her  father and his dreams. In his nightmares, he screams and rages and thrashes about. She talks of when she wakes him and he cannot even speak about the horrors his subconscious has grudged up from the deep. In dreams, you cannot run away. She ponders the thought, “Is that because he has lived his whole life not knowing freedom? Or does he hide his freedom somewhere, the way I hide mine in Post Office Box 34?” Her father is not only plagued in real life by the fears that have filled his life, but those fears have followed him into his sleep. Lack of freedom, destroys.

It destroys a country, it destroys a family, it destroys a soul.

“Ashamed? Of loving Dante?”

Ahh finally, RESOLUTION! I was beginning to feel the burden of Ari. The dead weight that he carried on his shoulders not only made him heavy but his readers too. His struggle at his own inner lie, Ari just would not let himself see his own truth. So, he lived and loved in misery. He even brought Dante to suffering, near the end. He said he couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t be friends with someone he was in love with. Dante had discovered his secret and greeted it with fervent acceptance. I think this troubled Ari the most. The fact that Dante was so okay with wanting to kiss other boys. The fact that Dante decided to quit lying to himself. How he then began to live his life according to that truth as well. Meanwhile, Ari is watching him in his happiness and new found freedom. Ari watches him and Ari wants to experience that with him. Only, he doesn’t even know it. Ari bottles emotions, tucks them in drawers and shuts them tight. Only he lives in a sort of confused agony in his own mind. Ashamed of so much. His thoughts, his natural body, and most of all his love for Dante. His resolve is a great feeling. Ari finally releases his pain and confusion and allows himself to understand. He takes his shame out of the equation and is left with his raw emotion, which he has no choice but to face. Ari finally takes a good long look in the mirror and sees with clear eyes the person he is. And he is free! Of the burdens of his love. At the end, he reminisces of his mother’s reaction,

“Ashamed? Of loving Dante?”

“Do You Remember the Summer of the Rain…”

And it’s happening. The harder Ari tries to shut out parts of himself the worse off he becomes. Ari is in a state of denial. He cannot accept gratitude for saving Dante in the accident. Ari, for some reason, does not want anyone to know how much he cares for Dante. If he says the heroic deed was only instinct than it will discredit any large amount of affection that he holds for Dante. Meaning Ari is protecting his “image” for the public and also, lying to himself which keeps his “image” about himself in line with what everybody else believes he should be. This falls in line with quote that is repeated several times in the book, “The problem with my life was that it was always someone else’s idea”. He is angry with his dad for not talking and angry at his mom for rules. He is mad at himself and just about everything else. Ari starts to become a loner. Keeping to himself, he thinks that his state of confusion will go away if he bottles everything up. Then Dante leaves and school starts up. Ari has a pessimistic attitude at just about everything as his depression grows. It may not even be depression. Ari is trying to be someone else. He is trying to abide by his mother’s rules, keep up with the experiences Dante is having, and find a way to talk to his dad. It all seems futile to him though. He starts working and even has his first adult beverages all the while never letting anyone in. Ari remains a constant occupant of his thoughts. They never go away and things never seem to get any clearer.

Classic Identity Crisis

So, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe or Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of Themselves. This is a classic case of identity crisis, representing and appealing to adolescents today. Both main characters have no idea who they are. Now that they have hit this period of change and “coming into one’s own” they are lost more than ever. The book is told from Aristotle’s or Ari’s point of view. There is a part in the book where Ari is re-reading entries in his journal and adding new. He had written about the bodily changes he was experiencing, a key sign of puberty. He made a list of things that he did not understand. These were new things that were never open to his eyes before. This makes adolescence seem as if a curtain is being lifted from the individual’s eyes. That they are able to see the world in the reality that it is, rather than the romanced depiction that plays through a child’s eyes. But since he was, also, not an adult he could not fully grasp this new world. He does not know how to process these emotions and thoughts that seem to plague him. He lacks the ability to pin point problems and feels with primitive emotion, feeling and not understanding.

 Ari looks at Dante as though he has it all figured out. Dante is described as having adult like mannerisms. Ari notes on several occasions of how Dante does not seem to really be fifteen. Stating that the way he talks and acts is mature like.

In this way, the book is portraying how youths can obtain quality guidance from their peers, but the peers that are producing the guidance are those that act like adults. This, in turn, means that adults are the ones for which youths should look to for guidance. 

And if those parts were to disappear?

So, who is Gene Luen Yang really speaking too? Is it a message about how Asian Americans are treated or is it a message about not losing your history? Is it a depiction of racism or of turning your back on who you are? For all intents and purposes I will be focusing on the aspect of how American Born Chinese reflects on how your history is key to the person you become. The primary source of this comes from the Herbalist’s wife and her message. Earlier in the book she had asked Jin what he wanted to be when he gre up. He wanted to be a transformer. She told him you can become anything as long as you are willing to sacrifice your soul. Later, the night when Jin is undergoing his transformation he dreams of the Herbalist’s wife. She says to him, “So little friend, you’ve done it.” In the morning Jin wakes up a very stereotypical, teenage American boy. Jin has become the transformer from his childhood. Only he gave up his “soul” in order to do so. I believe that his soul is representative of his history. The fact that both of his parents were from China, he seemed to have grown up with much contact to the Chinese culture. Jin, however, wants to reject it. He wants to rid himself of the ancestry that keeps him from being the “normal American boy”. Jin want to forget where he came from, the traditions in which he was raised, the native tongue of his parents. Jin wants it to disappear. But what Jin does not understand is that if those parts disappear than so does he. In this way, Yang is saying your past is reflective of you. If you forget that or decide to throw it away than you have “transformed” or lost yourself to the world.

American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese, is three stories in one. A story about a monkey king trying to be taken seriously. He wants to reject his monkey identity as he thinks it shameful. The second is about a teenage American of Chinese descent who starts a new school and is an outcast for his ancestry. Jin Wang is introduced to a new kid from Korea, Wei-Chen Sun, who he is reluctant to start a friendship with. The third story is about another American teenager who has a cousin from Asia who comes to visit. Danny, is embarrassed by his cousin’s flamboyant and non-typical behavior. In each of the stories the characters are trying to overcome something they are ashamed about. They want to reject a part of their lives that does not fit in with the social greats of their societies.

I have never read a comic before. Or I guess this would be called a graphic novel. It is interesting, to say the least, but I do not think that I am a fan. I find the pictures to be more a distraction than anything, really. To flip from words to pictures, from words to pictures is something that comes difficult. Switching my train of thought into focusing on another depiction of the story I find as an interruption. I also found it hard to use the “mind’s eye”, so to speak. The thing that I love most about reading is the ability to create my own characters, how I see them, how I think they should look like and act. I thought the comic took away from that, giving less room for the imagination of the reader. On the other to be able to create and write a comic, must take loads of creativity dumped right onto the page. It is an art, no doubt. But one that I particularly enjoy is another story.

The Non-Absolute Definition of You

“You’re a writer.”  I think this was the moment. The moment when Jackie officially became Jacqueline to herself. She had finally achieved what she has been pursuing for a long time. Always in her sister’s shadow, her intelligence was under appreciated. Her mind was taken for granted. Was she a liar or a storyteller? Was she brilliant or not? People kept trying to categorize her, put her in a place where she knew that she did not belong. I think that is why she had such a good relationship with her grandpa. She was like him. He understood her to an extent that nobody else could. In one part of the book he says something along the lines of, he cannot believe in a God that wouldn’t let him smoke his cigarettes or drink his beer. Yet, his wife, an upright faithful follower of the Jehovah practice, thought different. Jacqueline’s grandfather had to discover that about himself. Just as Jacqueline came to her conclusion of who she was and what she wanted to do with her life.

In the poem, what I believe, she summarizes all of her youth. She is every single experience she had ever had. She is every journey, every laugh, tear, and adventure. In each world, she says she is Jackie and Jacqueline. She is the child born in Ohio, that ran barefoot through the reddish dirt of South Carolina. She is the child that sat on the porch with her grandpa and the same one that shared her plate of food with Maria. She is not just one thing, but a collective of things. She is everything she thought and everything she thinks now. In a world where you must become one thing or the other, JacquelineWoodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming reveals the non-absolute definition of you.

Both are Human

Jackie was born in 1963. My father was born in 1963. Jackie was born in Ohio. My was father born in Michigan. Jackie is brown. My father is white. These are two very similar beginnings but two very different stories. My dad’s stories center around life on the farm, growing up in the rural town of Springport, and playing outside with his brothers. He was never burdened with the stigmas of race. His parents never had to instill in him that he was of value, for he was white and already had it. In those days that was all you needed to be above the ground level of society. He was never followed around in stores. He never had to sit at the back of the bus. And he should always look a white man in the eyes.

Jackie’s story seems to be a near opposite. Although, her story depicts much of the same childhood essence of playing in a rural town with her siblings, Jackie was burdened with the color of her skin. She was followed in stores. She was told to look at the ground whenever there was a white person around. Her parents had to whisper in her ear that she was just as good as those white folks. She was told they had to fight for what the white man had already been given. They had to fight for what was already rightfully theirs just for being a part of the human species. She was exposed to the brutal nature of the human race before she could even understand it.

Jackie and Todd. One is brown, one is white. Both are human. 

Yaqui is Still a Bully

I have mixed feeling about the end to Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. Although, the bullying situation was stopped I did not feel like it was addressed in the right manner. Meaning I feel like Yaqui still won. She got exactly what she wanted. One, to kick Piddy’s ass, and two, Piddy leaving school. Yaqui is just going to move onto another poor soul who dares to hit puberty and walk with a swishy behind. The people in charge were looking for suspension with hopes of her getting expelled. Is it just me or is this really messed up? Yaqui assaults someone, brutally, films it and posts it all over social media. And this isn’t grounds for being automatically expelled? For the school being a “Bully Free Zone” the zero-tolerance policy seems to be more like mid-tolerance policy. With bullies having nearly free reign to terrorize who they please.

When Yaqui’s suspension is up what will she do then when she comes back to school? Do they think that the suspension would give Yaqui a change of heart and that she wouldn’t hurt anybody anymore? I highly doubt it. Yaqui has some very severe issues. She needs counseling. She needs help. By just treating the side effects it does not actually treat the underlying cause. A person who has depression can take anti-depressants to manage their symptoms but it still doesn’t change the fact that they are depressed. The depression is still there. The problem is still present. Yaqui is still a bully. Yaqui will still bully, the symptoms of her bullying have just been managed for the time being. In this way, the bullying situation is being ineffectively handled. Unfortunately

, this is probably the sad truth for most schools. Kids never really get the help they need.

Youth Lens on Eleanor and Park

I am taking the youth lens and applying it to the book Eleanor and Park. In the book, there are several stereotypes made about youth. For example, when Park and Eleanor go upstairs the first time together and listen to music. Park’s dad yells out, “Don’t get anyone pregnant!” In this way, Park’s dad is assuming that the only reason they are going upstairs is to “get jiggy with it”, so to speak. They are presumed to be those teenagers that are exploring their new found sexual nature. They are wanting to be alone. So, when Park and Eleanor do end up alone at his house, they do some of that exploration that they were accused of earlier. This reflects the stereotype of unsupervised teens getting into inappropriate situations for their age. There is another moment when they are allowed to take the car and be alone together. Again, they dive into sexual nature. Consumed by their raging hormones.

The adults are holding the superiority here. They dictate when and to what extent the teens are to be left alone. Park can have girls in his room but the door must be open. It would leave too much to chance to leave them in a room alone with a bed. Here his actions and behavior towards Eleanor are dictated by his parent’s rules and expectations of him. It seems to be reflective of their age as Park’s parents seem to openly express their physical attraction for each other. Park talks of how it’s gross when his parents make out when his dad gets home from work. This is saying that it is okay for adults to express this level of sexuality but definitely not teenagers.

However the stereotype may not be completely misplaced.. “The adolescent brain: Beyond raging hormones”

"How Hormones Affect Teenage Behavior"

Would Having a Father Make the Difference?

This book, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, brings together the issue of poverty and bullying. Piddy Sanchez is the daughter of single mother, who knows nothing about her father. She feels abandoned. Always day dreaming about what her father would be like. She even imagines other men as her own father. She feels unwanted. She cannot relate to her mother very well. Her mother seems bitter about the past. Even though she loves Piddy, very much so, she is resentful of Piddy’s father and their current situation. She always talks about the sacrifices she has had to make for Piddy. This making Piddy feel even more like a burden. She is unwanted by her father and burdensome to her mother.

Unfortunately, this is a sad truth for many youth today. With the struggles of poverty parents are under extremes amount of stress to provide for their children. For a family with two parents and two incomes it is a struggle, let alone a single parent with one income. I wonder if Piddy would have handled her bullying situation differently if she would have had a positive father figure in her life. Each parent plays a significant role in the development of a child. I wonder if her self-worth would have been elevated with a father in her life? Her mother would no longer hold the burden alone of being a single parent trying to provide for her and her daughter. This may have helped her mother withhold her verbal acknowledgment of the struggles of parenthood to her daughter. This in turn would probably boost Piddy as she is no longer being told that she is burdensome. Her father, in turn, would hopefully have been a strong moral figure for her to look upon. It would have been another support system for her. An additional person that loved and cared for her. This may have also helped Piddy in her bullying situation.

"Why Would You Settle for Less?"

With obesity as an epidemic in this country there is a health craze happening. Many are wanting to eat healthier. This is a valid cause, wanting to be healthier. Our society has created a whole market off those that want to be healthy. We have fancy brands of clothes to work out in and fancy organic food that holds the promise to achieving that goal of good health. But what does it mean to really be healthy? Many would answer eating right and exercise on the reg. I’m here to focus on the eating right part of that. I’m not a nutritionist but have taken several biology and chemistry classes. Our society has made tons of money off marketing “organic” and “natural” foods. What does it really mean to be organic?

“Simply stated, organic produce and other ingredients are grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation. Animals that produce meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products do not take antibiotics or growth hormones.” (www.organic.org/home/faq)

But are they really? There is a gene in bacteria, the Bt gene, that releases a toxin that is poisonous to insects. That gene was taken from the bacteria and put in corn so that instead of spraying pesticides on the corn the corn creates its own. This is approved as an organic pesticide. Yet I thought corn was supposed to be GMO free?

So, what does it really mean to be natural?

“FDA has not developed a definition for

use of the term natural or its derivatives. However, the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances.” (http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm214868.htm)

In summary, natural is no added colors, flavors or preservatives. However, cyanide is a naturally occurring substance. Cyanide is found in bitter almonds. It takes .36g to kill a 160lb. person in 2-6 hours. This amount "occupies a smaller volume then the volume ofsalt that most people put on an order of French Fries."Is cyanide good because it is natural? Natural does not mean healthy or better.

This is not a rant to complain about companies and how they label their products. The purpose of this post is to show that natural or organic is not better. They are not really different from "regular" food. It is merely a marketing ploy that tricks consumers into spending extra money on products that claim to be better for you.

Is Difference the Downfall?

There are numerous comparisons that can be made about Eleanor and Park and Feed. One of the most notable ones being the concept of the self. In a world that dictates what a person should look like, how a person should talk, who that person ultimately becomes, there is a loss of independence. Both books demonstrate this theme. In Eleanor and Park both of the main characters have a difficult time adhering to the social norms. Park is more successful at it than Eleanor. But the person Park sees in Eleanor is the one that he is trying to hide. This ultimately attracts him to her and they form a relationship, struggling with societal norms throughout. The ending was a continuation of their relationship regardless of the struggle that the world posed on them. In the end their differences became their strength, in some sense. They found companionship being what they were instead of what they should have been.

In Feed there is the same concept of identity happening. Violet knows things. Things that other people do not. She has opinions and thinks for herself. This is because her feed was installed later in life, not the usual. Whereas, Titus goes with the flow and has his feed installed at the normal time There is the same level of attraction here between the two, though. Titus likes Violet because she is different. That “different”, that inability to conform to social rules is the very thing that makes Violet unique from all the other characters. That is her defining quality. In this book, though, the ending is not as happy. Violet’s difference from the other characters (her Feed tech being installed late) is actually the very thing that kills her. Symbolically, her difference was her downfall.

Violet . Violet and Her Diminishing Brain Capacity.

Violet . Violet and her diminishing brain capacity. She is losing her mental ability, her physical ability. Her malfunctioning technology is creating a massive disturbance in her life, one that will ultimately kill her. Violet is being used as a metaphor of the individual. Her feed is the technology that we use day to day. Our society would not be able to function if we did not have the technology. Her losing her mental capacity is correlated with how we have loss our individualism. We spend hours on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, reading, responding, longing for things we do not have, and wishing we could like him or date her. We have lost ourselves.

A hobby is supposed to be something that we do for fun. Something that holds our time in a that we enjoy without being completely stagnant. These days we, nearly, all have the same hobby, technology! Think about it. What do you do when you come home from work, school? What is one of the top contenders of how you like to unwind? It is the TV in the middle of your living room, the laptop plugged in in the corner, the phone that is sitting in your back pocket, or the game console perched on your entertainment center. We all have the SAME hobby. We engulf our minds in these virtual worlds, where we stop thinking and become stagnant. We are not our own anymore. Just as Violet pointed out, we are becoming more and more simple as time goes on. Why? Because we have loss the importance of self. We have idolized sameness and drummed out individuality. We are lost because we have never found ourselves, just merely copied what we have seen. By being simple we are a reflection of the characters in this book. We are all becoming the same person..

Woah! Just Woah...

Feed by M.T Anderson is quite the book. It makes me disgusted with technology nearly. Anderson tells the story from a first person point of view of a young teenage boy in a futuristic society. The majority of people have this type of microchip in their head that is the equivalent to a super smart google machine running that can understand your patterns of behavior and make suggestions. This boy meets a teenage girl named, Violet and they begin a courtship of sorts. I feel as though every character that has been presented, with the exception of Violet, is the same. They all speak in simplistic terms with an overuse of the word “like”. They are completely dependent upon the interactions of their feed to keep them sane. There is one scene where Titus and Violet go to a party and it is described as people looking off, blank stares, empty thoughts. Looking at pictures that flash by in their heads. Really none of the people that are present are actually present. There may be an attempt at socialization but everything they do is centered around the feed.

How eerie this is. People today are glued to their phones. We look at them as soon as we wake up, check them multiple times a day. We go to work or school and are on technology all day. We go home at night and are met with the TV, tablets, and more cell phone time. We have Xbox and PlayStation and now virtual reality; technology that you nearly live. Before we even say goodnight, we are already using our phone to awake us for the next day. How many goods, services, ideas etc. are we presented with on a daily basis? We are submerged in media sensory from the moment we wake up to the moment out head hits the pillow. How driven is our life by the technologies we created to aid in progression? How hindered is our life by the technologies

we created to aid progression?

"It was supposed to make you feel something."

Young love, what a force to be reckoned with. It is never given the attention it deserves but is merely shoved off as immaturity. Thought to be the result of overactive hormones and little life experience. It is a strong and powerful force that catches youthful hearts. The feelings are real. They are strong and hit like a train. One day they aren’t there and the next you cannot stop thinking about that one person. It is unthinking, feeling love. The kind that creeps into your thoughts and finds its way into your dreams. This love brands the heart, forever leaving its mark. Even in adulthood this young passion is never forgotten.

Eleanor and Park shows the force of that love. The book is finished but they are not. Eleanor and Park have prevailed. They have beat the odds. Separated, not together, but still loving each other, passionately through all the chaos and heartache they have endured. They are the “shouldn’t be together” couple. That post card with those three unknown words. “I love you”, is what I presume that they be. Eleanor did not say it once throughout the book and when Park read those words it describes Park as having a weight lifted off his shoulders. She loved him. Through the year of silence and heartbreak, she loved him. And he never stopped loving her.

“Or maybe she was just more afraid of being like everyone else.”

Park is waking up. He is starting to see through the shallow social stigmas that have governed not only his life but that of his classmates and his family. He taking the path less traveled, beginning to see the hindrances of adhering to social constructs of who the self is. Society is being represented by Tina, Steve, Cal etc. They are the “rule enforcement”, making sure that anyone who deviates from the set persona is rejected. Ensuring that they are disliked, pushed out, deemed unworthy. Outcasts. Too never be accepted, but always wanting to be. If this is the punishment for being different, then by using the fear or rejection, society or Tina can control the way you behave and act. The fear is their power.

It feels as though Park is beginning to realize this though. He is beginning to understand why Eleanor wears the flamboyant clothes and ignores the bullying. Eleanor has it all figured out. She is the rebel without even knowing. She will not let Tina or society ever know that they have won. I think that’s why she hated it when Mindy gave her the makeover. She kept saying “it’s not me”. Park knew he had always been different. He knew that he would never fit in with the cool kids or be Mr. Popular. So, he shut down himself and was like a robot following a program. Automated. Doing what protocol dictated but never really being himself. That is why Park wore the eyeliner. It was a statement of self-expression, or rebellion against the rules.

I think that is what attracted him the most to Eleanor. Once he started to see the cracks in her armor, he began to understand that she was different and almost proud of the fact. She was a reflection of what he wished he could be. She showed him what courage was. And he loved it, reveled in it, couldn’t get enough of it. He saw the beauty that was individuality. 

A Beautiful Enigma

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell is a book written on the perspective of two high school teens that cannot fit into the mold. Whether that mold be from parents, their peers, or even themselves. Let me begin with Park. He seemed to have had a normal childhood growing up. Loving mom, a dad who was around, and an annoying younger brother. This is the surface however. Park has a soft personality, quiet and quirky. He is intelligent. He is weak though. Not just in the physical sense but in the emotional and social sense. Almost cowardly. This aspect, this very thing is what he dislikes the most about himself. Every time a situation arises and he cowers, he thinks of his father's commentary. His father sounds like a stereotypical man's "man". Drives a stick, calls his son a pussy, has an adoring wife. These are the characteristics that his father is looking for in Park and Park exhibits near to none. Park is dormant. He is maneuvering through his life, taking the path of least resistance. Alive but not really living.

Then there is Eleanor. She is fiery and not meaning her hair. She has not lived a pampered life, nor had a normal childhood. Yet I find her to be alive! She feels everything. This makes sense since her nerves have been on edge for most of her life. I find her hypersensitive but at the same time laid back. She has in intrinsic insight to see things for what they are instead of what everybody may pretending they may be. Her most aspiring quality is her ability to stand out, continually. She never tries to fit in. She merely just is.

The beauty of the two is that Eleanor is bringing life to Park. She is teaching him how to feel and in return he is teaching her to trust and to love. She is teaching him courage and identity without him even knowing it. This is the beauty of love and the human connection. Although they are very different creatures, they find solitude in each other for the attributes that each lack. A beautiful enigma.

More about the characters? http://www.shmoop.com/eleanor-and-park/characterization.html