When I was eight, I remember waiting in the piercing cold. I knew it was worth it to see my great grandma who had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s for the last time. Looking back, I saw my mom in the minivan, waiting. I told her that this is something that I have to do alone, not wanting her to see me cry. When Grandma Strelow answered the door, she replied to my smile by stating how much I’ve grown. I replied by saying,”Actually my grades are still the same.”
She looked confused, because people usually don’t respond to “Look how much you’ve grown.” You see, I was referring to my growth “mental-wise”, not “height-wise”… and not accidentally.
Growth, to me, has always meant both physically and mentally. And someone who has not grown both physically and mentally, to me, has not grown and/or showed complete growth. Misha of Milkweed, is a boy who lives his life in a Ghetto during the Holocaust. The book also shows what it’s like after life in the Ghetto. The Ghetto was a jail-like place with no rights, which reminded me of the setting in The Giver, where a boy named Jonas lived out ignorant days. Both Misha and Jonas were trapped in a place they did not want to be. But despite their similarities, their growth ended with different results.
Jonas, at first, did not want to learn. He had no reason to. His life was perfect and brainwashed. But when he abruptly “became” an adult, he was forced into learning. It was his job. But when he learned, his thoughts point of view changed. Even his opinions altered (even though he really didn’t have any before). His anger about the blindness within his community matured from his newly formed opinions and information.
Misha yearned to learn more throughout the book, like Jonas. And although his vocabulary develops along with his body, his thoughts are still the same, obsessive and immature; mainly because he didn’t know what to do with the information because unlike Jonas, Misha didn’t have time to form complicated opinions. His main thoughts were to survive.
Sometimes when Misha thought about something sentimental, he wasn’t trying to. He hid these memories from others… and from himself. I feel that if he had thought of Janina (another character in Milkweed) purposely, he would completely lose it. Misha had enough healing to do physically and had to deal with the changes from the Ghetto and from Pennsylvania, America. Like all the freedom he had later on in life, sometimes he didn’t know what to do with himself.
When Jonas learned, it was forced and with great visual description. Unlike Misha, where it was hurried and came with no description, because like I said before, their main thoughts in the Ghetto was to survive.
Eventually, Jonas runs away, because it is the only way to return the memories to the Community’s people. This is done to “save” them from more ignorance. So they can live the life they want for themselves. But when Misha runs away, it is for self-preservation, because he has no intention to “save” his community. This is because people do not believe he can, so he doesn’t even bother to try.
Knowledge did not change Misha, but did change Jonas. This is why Misha is a static character, one that does not develop in time. He has always run away and with always do so, both physically and mentally.
