Continuation of Theme into Summary: The Shack

      As I talked about in the theme of this book, decisions are key in your life. Whether they be the everyday ones that come with more and more ease each day or the big ones that you only need to makes once or a few times in your life that could drastically alter your life.
      The summary of this book The Shack is that once the main character, Mack's, daughter gets kidnapped and presumably dead, he goes into a deep depression is which he calls the "Great Sadness". This draws him further from his wife and his other children. Until one day he receives a letter in the mail on a frigid-icy-cold day. In this letter it contains a friendly invitation to go to the shack in which his daughter had been kidnapped. he believes that this is just some kind of cruel joke being played on him. He thinks long, hard, and painfully. He finally decides that this letter could have only been written by God, so he decides to go. Although he couldn't understand why God would try to bring up the two most painful things in his life, he was now determined to figure out what was the meaning of this mysterious letter. "While Mack's relationship with God is wide..." (Young 11)
          Once he gets there he meets and befriends several strange character that all represent some sort of Godly or spiritual figure, the most important being Papa who is the representation of Jesus. After staying there for awhile he and these characters get along well and talk about everything, including what happened with his daughter. After all of the time spent with these "people" he starts to understand what has happened and become more at peace with the kidnapping of his daughter. He forgives everything that has happened including the person that took his daughter. "Somehow it seemed easier to live with God when I thought of him as the demanding taskmaster, or even to cope with the loneliness of The Great Sadness" (Young 196).

Beginning of Book Analysis: Decisions

        Whether it be easy or difficult, daily or annually, we are going to have to make decisions. Some of them may  be more challenging or even more confusing then others, but whether you know it or not we make hundreds of decisions a day; what time to wake up, what to wear that day, what to eat, how to get somewhere, etc. Those are just some of the easy daily ones that we are used to, and since we've become so accustom to these, we end up making the choices with more ease the more we do them.
    

 Unfortunately, there are much harder choices to make which never get easier. Whether it be relationships, what college to go to, or how much to commit your self to one thing such as a sport, the choice just never gets easier and there are always different variables for each thing that we have to consider before making a decision.

        For us, some of those variables may be the weather or the people you are with. For Mack in my book, the variables were more extreme and life changing. For example, he did not know who sent him the letter. It could have easily been someone trying to do something bad to him, instead that person (God) who wrote the letter made it seem friendly as if they were a friend that Mack had not seen in awhile. The note reads, "Mackenzie,
                                                    It's been a while. I've missed you.

                                                    I'll be at the shack next weekend if you want to get together.
                                                                                          -Papa" (Young 16)
When Papa says that it has been awhile and he misses him, that suggests that they were recently friends and that he misses talking to him and that they should meet up. That's what makes this letter bizarre, is that although it sounds very friendly and inviting, he doesn't know any person by the name of Papa so he is questioning whether to go or not. He suggested that they meet up and get acquainted again. Unfortunately it was in the shack.

        Mack had recently just had his daughter abducted on a family vacation, and he is very cautious and weary about going here. In the end he decides that the best choice would be to go. He is in a deep depression right now and is losing a friendship with someone who had been his best friend. So he figures he might as well to go and try to get away from everything and maybe get some answers.
"Mack sat and stared at the note. It was confusing and painful trying to sort out the swirling cacophony of disturbing emotions and dark images clouding his mind- a million thoughts traveling a million miles an hour. Finally, he gave up, folded the not, slid it into a small tin box he kept on the desk, and switched off the light" (Young 22). This to me shows that he had a hard time deciphering and actually making the decision on whether or not to go. So eventually after staring at it blankly for awhile and not coming to a conclusion, he put it down, went to sleep and left it for later.
   
            So to put it simply, some decisions in life may be the easy everyday ones, or they could be the ones that are drastic and may change your life and/or how you look at something or someone.

The Shack: Character Religious Beliefs

         As I'm reading I'm noticing that religion is very important to Mack's friend. The first line in the book says, "Who wouldnt be skeptical when a man claims to have spent an entire weekend with God, in  a shck no less?" (Young 1) This already leads me to believe that he believes in God and that he is going to question his friend, Mack's, experience in some sort of shack.
     
        Another quote in this book, that explains the importance of religion  (Christianity), is found on page 8 where it says, "... I know his daddy was not a fall-asleep-happy kind of alcoholic but a vicious mean beat-your-wife-and-then-ask-God-for-forgiveness drunk" (Young 1). This was Mack's friend talking about how Mack's dad had treated his mom, which was obviously very poorly. This shows me, though, that his father felt bad about what he had done to his wife and had talked and/or prayed to God afterwards to ask for forgiveness for what he had done. This belief in religion had been passed down to Mack, and is also found in his friend.

       The final quote I will show is when his friend is describing how intelligent Mack was and what he liked to do and what he enjoyed.

"His favorite topics are all about God and Creation and why people believe what they do. His eyes light up and he gets this smile that curls at the corners of his lips, and siddenly, like a little kid, the tiredness melts away and he becomes ageless and hardly able to contain himself" (Young 10) That quote shows me that he likes to talk about and to discuss God and Creation, it is intrigueing to him.

       His beliefs were all about to come in handy as he recieves a letter in the mail telling him to go to the shack where his daughter was abducted on vacation. the letter was signed "-Papa"... He does not know who Papa is and just believes this is someones idea of a sick joke.

      I'm predicting that the next step he will have to take is to decide whether or not he wants to go to the the shack and found out who wrote the letter, or if the memory of his daughter being abducted is too unbareable to go.
I can relate to this where even talking to someone whom you had the tragic or epic memory with can be hard.
Will he go to the shack? Will his friend go with him? Does he have any ideas who sent him the note to go?