Literature / Touching Spirit Bear

Any major plot points in Touching Spirit Bear will be spoilers off when discussing Ghost of Spirit Bear, as that part of the article will be under the assumption you've read the first book before reading the second.

"Whatever you do to the animals, you do to yourself. Remember that.

Touching Spirit Bear is a book series written by Ben Mikaelsen. Touching Spirit Bear was published on January 9th, 2001. It later got a sequel, Ghost of Spirit Bear, 7 years later on June 17, 2008.

Cole Matthews was a troubled troublemaker from Minneapolis, Minnesota. At home, he was abused by his dad and his mom never tried to help him, and the abuse he suffered was passed down to his personality. His most recent act of violence at the time was against Peter Driscal, who reported him to the police. After beating him to the point of brain damage, he was put in juvenile detention where he met Garvey, a Tlingit elder.

Garvey introduced him to Circle Justice, a program meant to heal the soul and turn wrongdoers into good people. Cole accepted the offer, seeing it as nothing more than a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card. His punishment is to go to an island in Southeast Alaska, where he will have activities to help him calm his anger. But when there, he was so blinded by rage that he essentially screwed himself over hard enough to make his limbs stiff from cold water.

And then he met the Spirit Bear. And the Spirit Bear did something that he'll never forget.

After inviting Peter Driscal on the island to heal alongside him, they become best friends and head back to Minneapolis. However, they soon realize how violent the real world is, especially after they become the target for a group of bullies. All of this makes Cole struggle to contain his anger, and he realizes it's not enough to change himself. He has to change his world.

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Tropes from Touching Spirit Bear.

General tropes

• An Aesop: Each book has morals about self-containment, usually taught via symbolism.
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: As an entirely serious series, any form of violence is Played for Drama, often ending in bruises and blood.
• Heel–Face Turn: Most antagonistic characters redeem themselves by the end of the book, either through trauma or a simple change of heart.
• Jerkass: Each book has plenty of mean-spirited characters, whether they redeem themselves or not.
• Secondary Character Title: The books are named after the Spirit Bear, and though he does have a large role mauling Cole, other than that he's usually staring off to the side.

Tropes applying to Touching Spirit Bear

• Abusive Parents: Cole's dad drank until he couldn’t remember his own name, then proceeded to beat Cole. Turns out, this is because he himself was abused and didn’t know any better.
• Affectionate Nickname: Garvey calls Cole "champ" a lot. Of course, Cole doesn't like it.
• Alcoholic Parent: Unfortunately for Cole, both his parents are alcoholics. His mom drinks to forget, and when his dad drinks he becomes a monster.
• An Aesop:
  • You can not get rid of your anger. You can only tame it.
  • Anger is a memory never forgotten.
  • The power to choose is the real power.
  • Whatever you do to the animals, you do to yourself.
  • Animals can teach us more about ourselves than any teacher.
• Angry Dance: At one point, Cole performs the dance of anger, but not because he was particularly angry. He just had to do a dance every day, and the dance of anger was a very special dance that portrayed how he once felt.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Discussed. During a conversation between Cole and Garvey, Garvey asks Cole what he’d do if he saw an animal at a nearby stream. Cole says he’d kill it.
• Bears Are Bad News: Zig-Zagged. The Spirit Bear is first mentioned as this majestic creature, but then proceeds to nearly kill Cole. The attack saves Cole’s spirit and turns him into a better person.
• Blinded by Rage: Cole is during his first visit to the island, so much that he screws himself over in almost every way.
• Broken Aesop: People do bad things because they’re afraid. This can be true for victims of abuse, but what about murderers? Surely Serial Killers like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy weren't scared for their lives. This is even lampshaded by Peter.
  Cole: Look, Peter, I didn't mean to hurt you.
  Peter: You beat me up and smashed my head on the sidewalk until I was bleeding. They had to pull you off me. What do you mean you didn’t mean to hurt me?
  Cole: What I mean is I didn’t mean to get so angry. I didn’t decide all of a sudden to get mad and hurt you.
  Peter: And so now everything is supposed to be alright?
• Calling the Old Man Out: During a circle justice meeting, Cole exposes his dad for being a heavy drinker and whipping him.
  Cole's Father: We always wanted the best for Cole. His mother and I have devoted our lives to him, but he-
  Cole: That’s bull! You drink until you can’t stand up, and you’re gone all the time. A devoted parent doesn’t whip his kid until a shirt can’t hide all the bruises!
• Character Development:
  • Cole Matthews goes from a delinquent filled with rage to an actually decent person.
  • Cole's mom goes through character development too, becoming more confident and dressing how she wants.
• Childhood Brain Damage: After being beat up by Cole, Peter Driscal gains brain damage and depression.
• Dancing with Myself: After Garvey and Edwin leave him on the island during his second trip, Cole performs moves based on animals he sees on the island and learns something about said animals from them.
• Didn't Think This Through: When Cole tries to swim away from the island to another island, anger had clouded his mind so much that he forgot about the tide. Every time he did a stroke forward, the tide sent him two strokes back.
• Doesn't Know Their Own Child: After Cole exposes his abusing of him, Cole's dad is asked when Cole's birthday is. He claims that birthdays have never been a big thing in the household.
• Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: The one dive into Cole's being abused involves his dad beating him with the belt. If that wasn't bad enough, he was using the metal end.
• Driven to Suicide: Due to being brain damaged by Cole, Peter Driscal gains depression and attempts to take his life twice, but fails.

• Family-Unfriendly Violence: This book for 9-year-olds has accurate depictions of child abuse, beating a kid up to the point of bleeding, being mauled by a bear and eating a mouse live.
• Freudian Excuse: Cole beats up Peter to the point of brain damage and suicidal thoughts. Why? Because he is abused by his dad and neglected by his mom.
• Ghostly Animals: Spirit Bear. Averted since it’s a real bear and not a spirit, though it tends to disappear in the blink of an eye and is noted to have ghostly movements.
• Guilt-Induced Nightmare: While lying in a skiff injured on his way back to Minneapolis, Cole has a dream where everyone he knows helps him in some way, which Cole likes. He likes using people. Then everyone turns into vicious monsters and points out that he’s a liar.
  The Monsters: You fool! Why should we do anything for you? You’re nothing! You’re a baby-faced con!
• Hates Being Alone: Cole realizes during his second time on the island that he's not afraid of the island; he's afraid of being alone.
• Heel–Face Turn: While lying on the ground after being mauled, Cole realizes the error of his ways and his usage of fake power, and works on redeeming himself for the rest of the book.
• Heel Realization: After lying on the ground due to being mauled, Cole realizes he’s powerless and that he likely means nothing to the world other than dirt and soil for when he dies. He uses fake power.
• Honor Thy Abuser: One of the things Cole learns on the island is to forgive. He forgives his dad for abusing him, since he was abused himself and knew nothing but cruelty.
• House Fire: Cole burns down his shelter the first time he’s on the island after being controlled by rage.
• It's All My Fault: Garvey tells Cole this while he’s lying on a skiff post-bear mauling. Cole knows it’s his own fault.
• Jerkass:
  • Cole is during the first half of the book, lodging Peter Driscal’s skull into a sidewalk just for tattling on him and burning down the only shelter he had on the island.
  • Cole's dad whips Cole so much he gets scars, and he pays off all of his bails before he even gets to jail, when he belongs for child abuse.
• Jerkass Realization: Cole realizes while lying on the ground mauled that he has been feigning power and really just beats up people to give himself a sense of superiority.
• Karma Houdini: Apparently, Cole’s dad isn’t going to jail because he paid himself out of it. He abused Cole for everything he did.
• Karmic Injury: During the final chapter, Peter asks Garvey to let him and Cole go soak in the pond alone. This was to beat him up like Cole had beat him up a year ago. Cole doesn’t get brain damage, and as a previous aesop explained, Peter was too scared of Cole to think straight.
• Misplaced Wildlife: The Spirit Bear is depicted as living in southeast Alaska, though in real life they live in British Columbia.
• Never My Fault: When he first goes to the island, Cole blames Peter for his being there because he let him give him brain damage, and he blamed his dad for abusing him to turn him mean.
• No Dead Body Poops: When Cole is eating the mouse and crushes its skull, there’s no mention that it leaves droppings. Though that’s for the greater good, considering the scene is squicky enough.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The plot is set up when Cole violently beats up Peter on the sidewalk, to the point where Peter gets brain damage. Some kids had to pull Cole off of him.
• Noone Could Survive That: Cole, who had attempted to swim in cold water and got hypothermia as a result, is mauled by the Spirit Bear and has most of his bones broken, was highly malnourished beforehand, and keeps getting blood sucked out of him by mosquitoes and horseflies, would lead someone to assume he's done for. But he clings on to life long enough for Garvey and Edwin to find and rescue him. His physical therapist even admits that what he went through would have killed most people.
• Parental Neglect: Cole's parents never loved him and preferred alcoholism (Cole’s mom drank to forget), which is the justification for Cole’s Jerkass personality. The mom, however, actually did try to love him and could never protect him because she’d get abused alongside Cole, but undergoes Character Development and no longer neglects him.
  Cole: My parents are divorced and don’t give a rat if I live or die. All they care about is themselves. Nobody cares about me. All my life I’ve been dumped on.
• Redemption Rejection: When Garvey introduces Cole to Circle Justice, Cole accepts the offer not to heal the soul, but to avoid jail. This ends up not working well when Cole gets to the island.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: While lying on the ground mauled and injured, Cole eats a mouse because food is energy and energy is life. The book goes into great detail about the experience.
• Rich Bitch: Cole’s father is wealthy and powerful. He uses this to get himself out of jail, despite the fact that he abuses Cole.
• Secondary Character Title: The titular spirit bear doesn’t have much of a role aside from appearing every now and then and mauling Cole.
• Spiteful Spit: Cole tends to spit at people he doesn’t like. He spat at Peter while he was sobbing on the sidewalk, at Edwin on the skiff, and life when he thought he was gonna lose it.
• Tame His Anger: The book is about healing Cole's soul and making him a better person.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Cole redeems himself to the point where his times of evil felt like a whole other lifetime.
• Troubled Abuser: Cole abuses others because he is abused by his dad, who was abused himself by his parents.

Tropes applying to Ghost of Spirit Bear

• 20 Minutes into the Past: The book was released in 2008, but takes place directly after Cole and Peter leave the island, presumably setting the book around 2003.
• Abandoned Area: Cole and Peter try to roll bowling balls down an abandoned apartment building as a substitute for the ancestor rocks. It also ends up being where the homeless man is.
• Adapted Out: Edwin doesn't appear at all.
• Adults Are Useless: Every teacher does absolutely nothing about the bullying, even when it's happening in front of them.
• Animal Motifs: The homeless man and the Spirit Bear. The man appears on-and-off and disappears quickly like the Spirit Bear, and he has a lifelike bear carving of him, too.
  • Cole represents his school with the Spirit Bear, as he changes the school just like the Spirit Bear changed him. The Spirit Bear eventually becomes the new mascot.
• Bullied into Depression: Trish gets depression from being bullied by a Girl Posse all the time, and eventually commits suicide.
• Bullying the Disabled: Keith and his friends target Peter for his limp and brain damage. And it's not just Peter; bullies tend to pick on those who aren’t able to fight back, which means they bully the disabled as much as they bully others. For example, Cole sees a boy with Down Syndrome getting bullied at one point.
• Bully Turned Buddy: In the first book, Peter resented Cole for giving him brain damage and ruining his life. In this book, they've gotten over it and are best friends now.
• Crazy Homeless People: The homeless guy Cole and Peter see frequently does not speak and only stares at the two, and doesn’t have a reaction when Peter gives him back the carving he lost. He also just has a hyper-realistic spirit bear statue.
• Driven to Suicide: Trish gets bullied so much that she finds it unbearable and commits suicide, leaving a suicide letter behind.
• Foul Cafeteria Food: Discussed. When Cole finds people calling the cafeteria food gross and dumping it in the trash half-eaten, he sees them as Ungrateful Bastards since he had to eat his vomit and a live mouse to survive after the bear mauling on the island.
• Gang of Bullies: Keith and his friend. However, Keith does have a change of heart and separates from the gang.
• Happy Rain: At one point, it starts to rain just as Cole and Peter are walking out in the open. Cole, who had just learned that your reality is based on what you make of it, embraces it and plays in the rain with Peter.
• Immediate Sequel: The book starts when Cole and Peter leave the island. It takes place on the last day of the island if counting the preface.
• Never My Fault:
  • Peter's dad blames him for everything, though by the end he seems to have become nicer towards Peter.
  • Cole’s dad blames Cole for his bad life when he first visits his office, and his mom during Cole's next visit, though like Peter's dad he becomes nicer.
• Nostalgia Filter: The adults at the Board of Education meetings think the school's bulldog mascot is better than Cole's Spirit Bear mascot, as they had grown up with it and classify themselves as Minneapolis Central Bulldogs.
• Rage Breaking Point: When he first sees Peter get beat up by Keith and his gang, seeing it happen to someone so defenseless eventually releases the anger Cole had been smoldering and he starts a fight. Of course, he's called to the principal’s office and is blamed for the whole thing.
• Sucky School: When Cole was mean, everyone was intimidated by him. While he was on the island, tension cleared up and people became meaner. By the time Cole comes back to school, almost everyone is a complete Jerkass, and the teachers don't even bat an eye. Thankfully, Cole tells Ms. Kennedy that she has to reinforce rules, leading to him bringing Circle Justice to school and changing the mascot to a Spirit Bear to show change.

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