Sowell Final Post

There are many themes in "The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera," but one of the most important was to push threw your pain. Throughout Juan's whole life, he had to keep going on no matter how badly it hurt him. For example, in Chapter 3, it was Juan, Raul, and Andres' second day of the journey to America, and already they were confronted by a gunboat. Andres went out to sacrifice himself for the good of Juan and Raul, and ended up being killed. Like I said, it was the second day and already Juan had lost one of his best friends. Emotional, that hurt Juan, but he kept going for America. Also, in Chapter 8, Juan's other friend, Raul got devoured by a shark, so he was left alone, but he kept moving on. All of his perseverance left him floating in the middle of the ocean, until Antonio came searching for him, and the Coast Guard later rescued him. Even though all of this got him to the U.S. which was what he was trying for all along, he wasn't done pushing through the pain; he had to meet up with Raul's brother, Jose. Even though it brought him much pain, Juan had to explain to Jose that Raul was dead.