"Stolen Day" Essay

Rewards Of Determination

You wake up to your alarm clock, it’s Monday morning and time to get ready for school. The last thing you want to do is have to deal with more teachers today after your long weekend. But as usual, you get up and get ready even though you’d much rather want to sleep. This is the exact opposite of what the main character in “Stolen Day” written by Sherwood Anderson, did. He was so desperate to miss school he made himself believe he had inflammatory rheumatism. This shows that our society has grown to become very lazy and careless. We always want change and refuse to enjoy normal routines, which made him careless about life. Sometimes we have to go through boring routines in life, and in the end they benefit us greatly.
The main character in “Stolen Day” is a boy who just wants to get by with life as easily as he can. This life set determination took over his mind and made him careless about his surroundings. You can’t go through life without facing the tough times, even if it’s the last thing you want to do. The boy let his laziness take over which made him stay home. If he would have went to school, he might have had a great day that would have later benefited him. “Stolen Day” is an excellent comedy to tell the reader about carelessness.
A comedy begins with normalcy in life which starts with the boy attending school in spring. The story continues with a mild conflict when the boy realizes his body is aching. This then causes him to stay home from school. The conflict is then realized when he comes to a conclusion that he might have inflammatory rheumatism. Next, the resolution occurs when the boy shares his discovery with his family. They all laugh and deny his conclusion because they know that he tricked himself to stay home from school. The comedy then returns back to normalcy when the family has dinner together. This short story is a great example of a well written comedy and a clear theme.
The theme of “A Stolen Day” is man vs. himself. The reasoning for this relies on the boy’s thoughts in the story. He made himself believe he had the disease because of his desire to miss school. The conflict in the story was all inside of his head, which caused problems for himself. If it weren’t for his distracting thoughts in his mind, he would not have stayed home from school. This gives a clear message of tough experiences through its theme.
In order to be rewarded in life, you have to face the hard times. People don’t realize that hard work pays off with great rewards. But the option of laziness gets in the way of the determined thinking. You have to decide whether you are going to be a hard worker with a good determination or a couch potato with no hope. So what will you decide to do? Sit on the couch and eat another bag of chips, or get out and accomplish something?