Group Circle Preparation Homework

- “Eleanor & Park (R. Rowell)” pp. 120 ~ 160

Heesang Kim (Passage Picker)
(p. 158)
He was. He was standing there in the half light, wearing a gray trench coat and black
hightops, and watching for her.
She ran past the last few houses to get to him. ‘Good morning,’ she said, shoving him
with both hands.
He laughed and stepped back. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m your girlfriend,’ she said. ‘Ask anybody.’
‘No … my girlfriend is sad and quiet and keeps me up all night worrying about her.’
‘Bummer. Sounds like you need a different girlfriend.’
He smiled and shook his head.
It was cold and half dark, and Eleanor could see Park’s breath. She resisted the urge to
try to swallow it.
‘I told my mom that I was going to a friend’s house after school …’ she said.
Park was the only person she knew who wore his backpack actually on his shoulders,
not slung over one side – and he was always holding onto the straps, like he’d just jumped
out of a plane or something. It was extremely cute. Especially when he was being shy and
letting his head hang forward.
She pulled the front of his bangs. ‘Yeah.’
‘Cool,’ he said, smiling, all shiny cheeks and full lips.
Don’t bite his face, Eleanor told herself. It’s disturbing and needy and never happens in
situation comedies or movies that end with big kisses.
‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ she said.
He hung onto his straps and shrugged.
‘Yesterday happens.’
God, it was like he wanted her to eat his face clean off.

The passage I chose was the part where Eleanor got better two days after the night when she
called the police and made Richie furious, and had this romantic talk with Park at the bus stop in
the morning. This part was very impressive to me because the expressions were quite touching,
romantic, and cringe-causing. Park friendly teasing her that he had worried her so much, and
Eleanor expressing her heart fluttering inside her mind by describing the desire of “devouring”
him was very hilarious to read. It made me feel the purity and excitement of first love, though I
haven’t felt those emotions at my teenage years like them. The second reason that this was very
impressive was that this part showed how much Park had meant to Eleanor. He was there to
lighten her up, urging her heart to palpitate, and this was very necessary to Eleanor due to the
bad circumstances she dealt with at her house and school. With Richie being so hostile to her,
with Tina and the most of the kids at school at the same time, it would have been so stressful
and lonely for Eleanor to endure. Even though she pretended not to care about them (she didn’t
care about her outfit and style, and intentionally neglected people who were hostile to her.), the
feeling of isolation might have led her to depression, if it weren’t for Park to exist as her only
hope and delight in her life. Her expressions seems too positive and humorous for a girl who is
going through such negative conditions in house and school. Park would be the one who can
arouse those feelings in her life.

Questions
Q1. What arouses hope and will in your life so that you can live on positively?

First, I think it is my happy, delightful past memories I had in the past that gives me will to live
on. My parents are warm hearted and decent parents, and they gave me lots of opportunities to
experience various things. We enjoyed traveling and having times together at weekends and
vacations. The trips we had together made me foster enterprise and initiative to grow up to be an
independent person. Having times together sharing thoughts by conversation taught me how to
make a healthy relationship, and have conversations with respect on others. And the virtues of
humanity, honesty and criticism they had taught me throughout my childhood had influenced my
personality a lot. Secondly, I still feel that there are many things to learn in life, and they give me
“obligations” to live on. I have been feeling this responsibility to learn and study since high
school, which made me read a lot, and the more I read, the more I figured that there are so much
things I am not aware of in the world. This was actually activated much rapidly as I began to
study at university. Therefore I would sustain life, learning more things by studying and
experiencing life, to reach an ideal, appropriate model of human being by myself.

Q2. Who do you feel or have felt this attachment and feeling of loveliness on someone in your
life? (It doesn’t have to be a lover.)

When I was a 5th grader in elementary school, our family had a chance to babysit my cousin who
was a 2-year-old baby for a month, due to occasions of my aunt and uncle. All four people in our
family were so into him, “addicted to” his adorableness. Every expressions he made and every
sound he made urged the desire in us to bite his cheeks. It was my winter break by then, but I
had to take a temporary after-school class on school. I had to stand my desire to run back to my
house and play with the baby while I was at school taking class, and when the class was
dismissed I ran to my house as fast as I could to see his cute face. Now he has grown up to be
the same age as me when we used to babysit him (5th grader), but our family still remember him
as the most adorable baby we’ve met, and have special emotions for him.

Q3. What do you do to relieve stress and seek calmness when you encounter stressful situations?
What makes you feel better when you are depressed?

I began to feel the emotion of depression much less than before after I graduated high school.
The senior year of high school, when I was preparing exams for entering university, was such a
stressful year for me since I couldn’t accept my grade decline and such disapproval aggravated
the situation. At the summer break I went to see a psychological counselor and talked about the
emotions I feel and how I have lived through. From such conversations, I could understand and
clarify my circumstances much better, and learned how to accept the experience as itself by
segregating it from myself, the subject who have experienced it. After I figured out how to relieve
stress and soothe myself up, I never got so depressed even though there were tough days later
then at university. I tried to possess a contemplating, objective view towards the situation by
distinguishing the human being myself and the actual situation I am in. Also I made lots of
conversations with my close people around me. There were always the inner myself and the
people I love to cure and soothe up my stress, and talking to them helped me relieve stress.

Q4. Do you have experiences when you had made someone worry too much about you? How did
you feel about him or her?

I have one experience, and this one is present progressive. This winter I have had the vision
correction surgery at both of my eyes. The type of the surgery was lens injection, which was the
safest and the least painful. Although it was my mom who had suggested me a surgery, she was
even more nervous than me, both before and after the surgery. After the surgery I apathetically
complained about the blur eyesight due to the swollen cornea. Immediately after she heard that,
she looked over all the symptoms of the surgery and the side effects, showing extreme anxiety. I
was actually the one who was calming her down. These days I sometimes experience such blur
sight too, but once after the doctor assured me that the blur eyesight is a common symptom that
would eventually be reduced, I decided not to tell my mother in case she might worry too much.
Her worries make me feel her love and caring towards me, and I appreciate them a lot. Though I
have been living outside the house for almost a year, it seems that all her concerns are still about
me.