Cole Matthews!
Infamous Child Criminal Changed By Nature?
Cole Himself
Cole Matthews has never been close friends with the law. Cole has stepped on it, spat at it, and had broken it. Many. Many. Times. “He was an innocent looking baby-faced fifteen-year-old from Minneapolis who had been in trouble with the law half his life,” (5 Mikaelsen). But he messed up big time. He was able to get out of anything too bad with the help of his father’s expensive lawyers, but this was inexcusable, he bashed the head of another student into the pavement, causing severe and permanent brain damage, as well as making him suicidal. According to Edwin, Peter tried to kill himself because he felt like nobody cared about him. He couldn’t walk straight anymore, he got his words slurred and he talked weird. In any other circumstance Cole would’ve just let that wash over him. The things that the Island, Bear, and his anger on the island taught him showed him that he wouldn’t get off that easy. He felt the guilt that he should have felt as he got revenge on Peter for telling a teacher he robbed a store. He wanted to- no, had to help Peter heal if he was going to heal. And thus started the reformation of Cole Matthews.
The Sparrows
The Island
Spirit Bear
Cole In The End
In the end, Cole has changed a lot. He learned how to ‘ignore’ his anger and how to prevent himself from exploding. Many, many examples of his change come from when he was in the island with Peter. “‘You do care,’ Cole said, shielding his face, ‘I’m not ever going to hurt you again. Can’t you see that’” This quote from page 236 shows how Cole is done with his anger, and with having nobody trust him because he was a liar, in fact on page 112 he thought, “Beginning today, he would tell the truth. This words would become his only proof,” to have such a determined mindset is very good to have when you originally lived your life as a lying ‘baby-faced con’. Cole, at that moment, truly took the first steps to becoming a better person. By the end of the book, he wasn't perfect, he still had his anger bubble up more often than he’d like, but he was getting better at understanding his own anger, and his own feelings.