Harris and Me: A Summer Remembered

“Home became, finally, something of an impossibility for me and I would go to stay with relatives for extended periods of time.” 

At the opening of the novel, the protagonist is displaced and has no true home. The protagonist’s journey through the novel centers around his inner conflict with feeling at home and belonging, and the process of being accepted as one of the family. His initial disposition of nervousness and hesitation towards the thought of staying with the Larsons is a stark contrast from how he feels by the novel’s conclusion.

“They lived on a farm forty miles north of the town I lived in, yet it might as well have been on a different planet. The ride took about an hour and a half, but it went through such varied terrain that before we had gone five miles I was in despair. For two or three of those miles the car moved past farm country that still seemed rather settled. Frequently there were tractors working in the fields and people who waved cheerfully, walking down the sides of the road. But soon the trees closed in, closer and thicker until they were a wall on either side and the road and car were enveloped in a curtain of green darkness. And there were no more open fields or driveways, just dirt tracks that disappeared into the forest and brush. It was like going off the edge of the earth on those old maps used by early explorers, into places where it said: There Be Monsters Here.” 

Paulsen describes scenes in the novel with detail and vivid visual imagery. As the protagonist is approaching the Larson’s farm for the first time, he observes the ever-thickening forest around him. This luscious language is consistent throughout the work, as the protagonist seems to have a very visual memory, and much of the scenery he paints for the reader is reflective of this. Recalling memories in this fashion brings the reader right into the moment, making it more real and personal. The protagonist’s description concerning monsters suggests his apprehension at leaving the more populated town and entering the isolated country.