Eragon: A Story of Loss and Recovery

Meet Eragon, a 15 year old boy living in the land of Alagaesia, a make believe continent created by Christopher Paolini in the book, Eragon, riddled with war and death caused by the evil King of the empire Galbatorix. Eragon is just an ordinary farmer boy until he comes across a dragon egg in the mountain range the Spine and his whole life changes. He spends the next three years trekking around the nation with his mentor of magic and sword fighting, Brom. One of the themes I found in this book was that you should cherish what you have, because one day, it might all be gone. Eragon’s losses throughout the story shape what Eragon does. First of all, in the beginning of the book, when Eragon first finds the dragon egg, his uncle, Garrow, gets killed by servants of the empire called the Ra’zac. This causes a lust for revenge which sends Eragon on a journey from his small town in Palancar Valley to places so big he could never had imagined the size previously. The journey he goes on brings him to the Varden, the fighting force rebelling against Galbatorix and the Empire. Second of all, when Brom dies, killed by the Ra’zac, Eragon mourns him for much time throughout the book. With Brom by his side, Eragon would have made much better choices, probably preventing his arrest in Gil’ead which ended up good, but made Eragon a fugitive throughout Alagaesia, which was something Brom was strongly against. Also, Paolini brings Broms death up in the story many times afterwards, giving it a higher importance. Third of all, when Murtagh, a person that accompanied Eragon in the middle to the end of the book, who becomes a dear friend to Eragon as the story progresses, dies, Eragon becomes distraught that the last important person left in his life is gone and he has no one left to turn to for friendly advice on a good conversation, which Eragon had been lacking in the previous year. Murtagh had become an important character, like one that is so important that they technically can’t die, just like Brom. Without Murtagh’s death, though Eragon probably would not have stayed with the Varden. In my life, I have had to deal with loss. The first death was in 2009. My uncle Mark had a heart attack in June of that year. Over the next eight or so months, my uncle lay in a coma on a hospital bed, suffering, until he died. The second and third were my aunt and grandfather on January 18th and 19th of 2011, one day apart from each other. When these types of things happen, you have to find the adult that you have in yourself. This was especially hard for my sister and I, after all, we were only 10 years old at the time. I believe that this was the kind of predicament Eragon was going through, though he was 15. It gives us a chance to show that you can recover from anything, and this is what Eragon did.