Response to Litterature (Stop the Sun) by Trevor Neuenswander

"Terry sat in a chair next to his father, looking at the floor, wanting only for the earth to open and let him drop in a deep hole. He wanted to disappear."

In the story Stop the Sun by Gary Paulsen, a 13 year old boy named Terry, has a father that has Vietnam Syndrome. He has doesn't like to talk about it, even though he has random spasms, sometimes in public too! His son, Terry, tries to talk to him about it, and that's when it all came out.

"We were crossing a rice paddy in the dark,’ he said, and suddenly his voice flowed like a river breaking loose. ‘We were crossing the paddy, and it was dark, still dark, you couldn’t see the end of your nose. There was a light rain, a mist, and I was thinking that during the next break I would whisper and tell Petey Kressler how nice the rain felt, but of course I didn’t know there wouldn’t be a Petey Kressler."

Gary Paulsen has a great sense of imagery. You can almost see exactly what he is talking about in your head.

"We began taking fire from three sides, automatic weapons, and everybody went down and tried to get low, but we couldn’t."

"Mortars, I hated mortars. You just heard the wump as they fired, and you didn't know where they would hit. They swept back and forth with the mortars, and the automatic weapons kept coming in, and there was no radio, no way to call for artillery."

This is another example of how his imagery is so great. He uses a mix of onomatopoeia's and advanced vocabulary to really connect and make it seem real.


The plot in this extraordinary story is Terry trying to help his dad.

"Vietnam." Terry blurted out.

"No, that's another story, another part of my life, before you."

These quotes help express the plot and Terry's dads emotions.

"'Dad?' Terry said. He thought maybe I could stop him. Maybe I can stop him before... before it gets too much. Before he breaks."

"You cannot know the fear. It was dark, and I was the only one left out of fifty-four men."

"They didn't shoot me. They came, one of them poked Jackson's body and went on, and they left me. But I was dead. I'm still dead, don't you see? I died because I couldn't stop the sun. I died. Inside where I am - I died."