Summary Of Ernie Rylant's 'A Crush'

“Every experience makes people grow”(Anonymous). Ernie had many experiences that lead to him growing, even with bad experiences he grew out of it and became a better person. All of these experiences in “A Crush” by Cynthia Rylant were chain reactions and lead to each other. Ernie went through many experiences that caused change. These changes went in a certain order because it was an experience that led to the next experience that led to the next. Ernie started with his mom dying which led to him meeting Jack and having an experience with Jack that then led to him going to breakfast and having his experience with Dolores. Ernie’s first experience that caused change was his mom passing away forcing him to get a new home called the group house. An example that shows this is “Ernie loved watering indoor plants, and it was this pleasure which finally drew him outside”(Rylant 70). This shows that Ernie changed from being stuck in the indoors eating Oreos and nutter butters and being afraid of the outside world to watering indoor plants and finally going outside to the real world. Ernie is also learning more about plants and actually watering them because he didn’t do any of that when he was in his old …show more content…
He began with just his mother, then learned to interact with other people in the real world. This helped teach him how to think about other people and how these interactions affected other people. He grew and gained confidence through these experiences. No matter how bad the experience was he still learned and became better because bad experiences are also good ways to grow. His mom dying was bad for him but it kind of helped him grow out and talk more and have a whole different life. Without his mom dying he would still be stuck inside his house eating nutter butters and Oreos and not see what the outside world was like, and maybe not even be able to interact with anyone else besides his