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Responding to Kien’s post, he makes a valid point about the changing views in adolescence. I originally believed that due to finding heaven; the boys changed their outlook on life.

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“In junior high school, school wasn’t school, everything was backward-like”

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Responding to Samantas quote they buried it because they serve ofraid that someone will steal there discovery. Often people want something new and are curious so when’s they see something they haven’t yet they will strive to own it

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Responding to Margot’s statement, society will lead us a person towards their destination only if that person has a strength to tackle and overcome new and outgoing obstacles that might stand in the way.

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Repsonding to Alexis’s thoughts on the short story, I agree and adding on the story “The Secret Lion” also depicts how a young boy being perplexed by a new-found maturity. Furthermore, the decisions that he makes will no longer be decided by his mother because she is unable to see it.

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Responding to Vivian Hoang’s post
I agree with the golf course being pieces of the boys’ childhood. They want to keep it to themselves, but someday. they have to give it up. Not everything is permanent, so like their childhood, they have to grow up and let go of their past. By the end of the story, there is a moment of anagnorsis where the boys realize this and they mature as a result.

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“And then we hadn’t to decide what to do with it. We knew,because of alot  of things...this best thing was going to be taken away from us.”
By including this passage, Rios incapsulates how important arroyo was to the boys and why the boys did not tell others about that place.

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Because the main character grew up in a poverty strickened setting, suggested by the sewerage plant that would tell the people what day it is, he wasn’t able to make conscious decisions when he decided to go to the arroyo.

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The boys go down to the river to release the pent up feeling could be a way to achieve catharsis for them.

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Kien
Responding to Vynorton’s quote:
Their perfect heaven was rich and green, which differed much from the arroyo that the boys were used to. Since they viewed manmade features to be perfect, the unnatural golf course appealed to them and their young minds. It wasn’t until that perception was shattered by an adult that they lost the joys and innocence of their childlike minds, symbolizing a transition into adulthood.

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Sandy

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“One Thursday we were walking along shouting this way, and the railroad, the southern pacific, which rand above and along the far side of the arroyo, had dropped a grinding ball down there, which was, we found out later, a cannonball thing used in mining”

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Responding to Vy’s quote and analysis, I saw that the trek they had to make over the first hill made that experience of “seeing heaven” even sweeter, because they had to work for it. The idea of working hard for what we have is a stronger societal notion.

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We got down there, we were laughing, we kept hitting each othe, we unpacked our stuff and we were acting “rich”.

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“What we were really saying, but didn’t know the words, was how much that ball was like that place, the whole arroyo: couldn’t tell anybody about it, didn’t understand what it was, didn’t have a name for it. It just felt good.”

In the children’s mind, they believed that anything good they discovered would be taken from them. The joy of having a cannonball to throw around with brought happiness to their curious minds. The two boys were so afraid of losing their happiness, that they dug a hole to hide it in. It was buried. Throughout the story, anything that was considered fun to them was eventually taken away. The ball was buried and lost. The arroyo was too dangerous. Eventually, the boys learned the truth about the arroyo and the cannonball. Despite the dangers of the water, the boys continued to come back to their happiness at the end of the story. Despite the buried grinding ball, the boys knew that it was for the better.

"We loved it, and when we buried it we knew what would happen… we were two boys and twelve summers then, and it stupid. Things get taken away.”

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An archetype I saw in the story was the use of past tense and a sad correlation to the past almost a nostalgic feeling. A catharsis seen is that the narrator the child knew that he had grown up and could not go back to his innocence. I think a Greek correlation would be the story of Odysseus the hero who was lost for years to return to his home land knowing he could not refund the years he had lost.

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"Something got taken away from us that moment. Heaven. We grew up a little bit, and couldn't go backward".

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We got down there, we were laughing, we kept hitting each other, we unpacked our stuff and we were acting”rich”.

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The way the author wrote out the boys’ dialogue in the story. It was all mashed up, as if the boys are talking to fast because they are hyper and overly excited. The mom, however, is written to speak normally, with spaces and pauses. As one grows up, they become less enthusiastic as they learn more about the realities of the world. Did the author add this in to contrast the innocence with the coming-of-age element of the story?

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“Perfect. Heaven was green, like nothing else in Arizona.”

The boy describes the golf course as heaven. The golf course represents peices of their childhood that they are desperate of keeping.

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“If you went up to a teacher and said the word to tryand  find out what it meant you got in trouble for saying it.”

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Both characters, Sergio and the main character, seem to be unknowledgeable with high school and the way of life considering their speech and the way they talk about girls and teachers. Maybe they aren’t used to this type of scenery because they moved from wild.

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“The ball was gone..it was gone like everything else that had been taken away...We stopped going to the arroyo after not finding the thing.”
The ball disappearing could symbolize the idea that the boys zest and appeal for arroyo was no longer as strong.

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“And on the other side of this hill we found heaven.” The place over the hill symbolized heaven to them. It was the pinnacle of their summer and made the journey worthwhile. The use of the word heaven connects with society and how people want to reach heaven after death. These boys made it to that desired place that is sought after by many people.

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“We had this perception about nature then, that nature is imperfect and that round things are perfect.” This quote depicts how raw truth and freedom can be found in nature and the purest almost simplest of things. Something  that is dirty and imperfect to the world is seen by the main character as perfect and indispensable. This comes from society’s desire to perfect and overwrite humanly and orderly characteristics. The arroyo and the round object are seen as a place/object outside of humanities desire for perfection and its will to complicate as well as withhold infomation about what  It means to be human.

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“We had this perception about nature then, that nature is imperfect and that round things are perfect” (Paragraph 5).  The boys believed nature was abstract and that things that were unnatural were perfect. For instance, they perceived the grinding ball to be perfect since it was unnatural and manufactured until that perception was eventually lost by the time he retells this story. This perception suggests that although adolescent views may be ill-informed, they are also uniquely abstract.

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“We loved it, and when we buried it we knew what would happened”

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"Something got taken away from us that moment. Heaven. We grew up a little bit, and couldn't go backward.

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"All we used were small words, neat, good. Kid words." I was drawn to this quote because it shows how little the boys knew. The boys did not know much of the language, but they still did their best to communicate even though they felt like no one understood them. 

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"All we used were small words, neat, good. Kid words." I was drawn to this quote because it shows how little the boys knew. The boys did not know much of the language, but they still did their best to communicate even though they felt like no one understood them. 

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Sydney Uruet

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“We didn’t tell my mother, but together it was all we talked about, til we forgot. It was the lion.”

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Inessa Gornichar                                                            “We has this perception about nature then, that nature is imperfect and that round things are perfect”( paragraph 5). 

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Inessa Gornichar                                                            “We has this perception about nature then, that nature is imperfect and that round things are perfect”( paragraph 5). 

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The phrase “It was the Lion” uses symbolism to show strength and progress in exploring the unknown.
Curiosity is a natural human tendency, and this propensity navigates what society expects of us.

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“And we saw girls now, but they weren’t the same girls that we used to know because we couldn’t talk to them anymore, not the same way we used to, certainly not Sandy, even though she was my neighbor too”. I was drawn to this because of the image it painted in my mind that a girl is still seen physically the same, but it is now perceived completely different by the mind.

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“Perfect. Heaven was green, like nothing else in Arizona. And it wasn’t a cemetery or like that because we had seen cemeteries and they had gravestones and stuff and this didn’t.”(18)

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" So we went out, and we weren't dumb, we thought with our eyes to each other, ohhshe'stryingtokeep somethingfromus."
The way Alberto kept the words together. Making the mothers dialect this way tells something deeper.

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“It taught us to look the the other way. We decided, as the second side of summer came, we wanted to go into the mountains” (13).

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"I was twelve and in junior high school and something happened that we didn't have a name for, but it was there nonetheless like a lion, and roaring, roaring that way the biggest things do" (1).
Why did the narrator mention about his age? Does his age respresent or mean something in the story? What does the lion symbolize in the story if there wasn't an actual lion in the story?

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Austin: "Nature seemed to keep pushing us around one way or another, teaching us the same thing every place we ended up." These junior high kids are talking about learning life lessons just by exploring places and discovering things which seems like the author is connecting the kids to humans in general with how we go on in life learning how the world works.

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Austin: "Nature seemed to keep pushing us around one way or another, teaching us the same thing every place we ended up." These junior high kids are talking about learning life lessons just by exploring places and discovering things which seems like the author is connecting the kids to humans in general with how we go on in life learning how the world works.

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“We didn’t tell my mother, but together it was all we talked about, til we forgot. It was the lion.”

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“We buried it because it was perfect. We didn’t tell my mother, but together it was all we talked about, til we forgot. It was the lion.”
This quote referred back to the title and what was mentioned at the beginning of the story. The lion is a pathetic fallacy of the boys’ feelings in entering junior high. I want to know what else the lion represents. Besides representing a big change in the boys’ life, what else is it?

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"Something got taken away from us that moment. Heaven. We grew up a little bit, and couldn't go backwards."

As the two boys sit upon the mountain, or hill, they would be approached by two men; consequently, the narrator and Sergio's youth and innocence would be taken away. Time is their enemy, and it is inevitable that every human being must grow out of their adolescent shell. The hole was no longer their Coke-holder; the hole was a slot for the man's golf ball. It was not heaven, for it was simply a golf course. The secret lion was the epiphany of their lost sense of perfection and imagination; the world was no longer perfect as they sat in the ordinary, mundane world.

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Catharsis is demonstrated through the exploration of nature in “The Secret Lion” from the children. The children are archetypes of rebellious people with feelings of their needs not being met; therefore, they use their surroundings to give themselves freedom. This freedom is gained by keeping what they consider beautiful a secret.There is a correlation between “The Secret Lion” and Greek mythology because of the structure of the characterization of the children. Both of these examples have the characterization and the plot as the most important elements of fiction to relay the story to the audience.