My ideas on the story

This story is an emotional roller-coaster of sadness and regret with the main characters being a small 12yr old girl and an old man with just a few months to live.

This shows how the cliché saying "respect your elders" in in some cultures or people badly needing. She finds herself badly regretting that she ignored her grandfather after he had died this shows us that respecting our grandfathers and grandmothers we will learn valuable lessons that we can pass on to our family. In this way the world can learn and advance into the future in a positive way and this is shown in the book by “At the funeral, my sadness was overshadowed by a sense of regret. I had my grandfather the commonest of kindness”. This is also reflected by sometimes great sadness can inspire people to do wonderful things.

The world can be inspired by sadness and this helps to propel progress for the positive but sometimes for the negative. The story shows this as the author already regretting the refusal of kindness to her grandfather starts to care and learn Chinese and communicate with people in her home language. This is shown by “I’m not only willing but now I am able” this shows the transformation that great sadness can do to help people.