Cross Country

Eustace had already done a lot of farming and hauling with his horse, Bonnie, before he thought about taking a horse on a long distance travel. He started to take her out to the mountains for a few days every so often to get the hang of it, but Bonnie was not built well enough for these kinds of trips. Then, Eustace bought a horse named Hasty. “Where Eustace had had to teach Bonnie how to behave, Hasty now taught Eustace how to behave. Eustace paid close attention and learned quickly, until he and Hasty were equals, able to spend their days teaching each other how to be a pair.” (Gilbert 154) This is important because Eustace saw nature as a much more important factor than most people do. When he knew that he and Hasty were equals, they started taking longer travels together. Riding his horse across the country was a huge adventure to Eustace. A very important moment was when he rode through a poor neighborhood and people at a party all invited him to their festivities. They were nice to him and fed him until he couldn’t move. These people treated him like family. This was a revelation; he saw this as a way to break down walls and enter the consciousness of every kind of American. The horse was his icebreaker. “Nothing had prepared him for the intimacy with the nation that a horse could give him. It was the answer.” (Gilbert 155) He decided to bring his brother along with him. A woman named Susan also went, and her and Judson thought that the trip would be nothing but nonstop fun. But, Eustace knew that this was a challenge of survival.

Increased Pressure

Eustace is very upset. The increased pressure is effecting Eustace negatively. Much like before, he is always busy. He is overworking and most of the time he is traveling or building Turtle Island more. During this time, he is never one with nature. Eustace is the businessman. He seemed to lose the joy he gained by teaching and doing the things that normally made him feel good. He could not get a good connection with women either. Because Eustace is always busy, Valerie began to drift away from him. In Chapter 6 Valerie says, “He was and is a loving but intolerant person. Someone else’s opinon was never welcome. He was obsessed with making money, with buying land, with success, and he was always on the road. It got to the point where I never saw him. The only time we spoke was when he gave me orders.” (Gilbert 138) She had an affair with Henry and they broke up when Eustace figured out the betrayal after being lied to. He went through woman to woman, finding that he could never hold down a relationship. He called a psychologist to come to Turtle Island one day. “He told her that he feared that there was something wrong with him emotionally, that he couldn’t make his relationships with other people work. The folks he labored with at Turtle Island were always angry at him or misunderstanding him, and he wasn’t as close to his brothers as he would like to be, and he was always driving woman away or not getting close enough to trust people.” (Gilbert 144) The psychologist even told him that there was nothing wrong with him because she believed that all he needed was nature, because that was the image built around Eustace Conway. Eustace had even gone so far as to write to his father about how upset and depressed he was, and the pain he felt everyday.

Turtle Island

Starting Turtle Island was very hectic for Eustace at first. It was one of his dreams, and he wanted to have a chance to save some land that wouldn’t be torn down and built into houses. It was hard for him to ask his father for money to get his project started, since he hasn’t had a good relationship with his father. But, the start of Turtle Island was worth it. It was important to Eustace to show other people how he lived. He always wanted to teach other people how nature is important. Elizabeth Gilbert writes in the first chapter about how Eustace got into a conversation with a couple of drug dealers, and the topic of his shirt came up. Eustace explained that he had made the shirt out of a deer. Not only that, but he walked them through every step that he took to kill the deer and then sew a shirt together. He welcomed these strangers to visit him at Turtle Island and he would teach them how to live off of nature. She writes, “This is how Eustace interacts with all the world all the time- taking any opportunity to teach people about nature.” (Gilbert 13) On Turtle Island, Eustace was able to change children’s lives and show them there is more to life than the little box they were born in. He was a good influence on these kids. Eustace is very future-oriented when it comes to the environment he is happy to show the future generation that you have to value and respect nature. Turtle Island allowed him to do this. On the other hand, establishing Turtle Island and trying to make money to pay off his loan was making him overwork. He worked maybe too much, and his comfortable life was set a little off balance.

Ongoing Prejudice

At the beginning of this school year, about 20 other students from University High School and I were invited to be part of a diversity group that worked along with the Anti-Defamation League. We talked a lot of the prejudices and racism against not only our personal races, but prejudice around the world in general. Among the students there were African-Americans, Jewish people, Christians, upper class and middle class students, straights and homosexuals, Latinos, white people, and other ethnicities and races. Every race, ethnicity, gender, belief, or being has a prejudice against them. Anyone who is different in some shape or form than the “norm” has some discrimination against them.
We shared stories about racism towards us. I’m Mexican, and I haven’t had any significant injustices done towards me, besides stupid little jokes here and there about stereotypes like mowing lawns. But, I realized that it can get a lot worse than that.
It’s obvious that there is racism everywhere you turn, but this class opened my eyes to how it affects everyone. People told stories about being beat up, called names, switching schools, and being hurt so deep down just for who they were. You could say that people are getting better, because we don’t have slaves anymore. But now prejudice and racism are just being used in other means. So many people today still suffer from these prejudices. It is hard to grasp why people are uncomfortable with someone different than themselves. Why would someone want everyone to be the same? Diversity is one of the most important things that the human race has.