"The Cave" by Jean McCord
"The Cave" by Jean McCord teaches us that we should be individuals and value other people's lives, which is a very important lesson in life. McCord combined irony, a believable main character developed throughout the story, and an excellent writing style to produce her short story. This short story is about a boy named Charley and a bum named George. Charley met George one day while running and liked him. The next week, Charley found an entrance to a cave, but he did not realize it was George's home. Charley told his gang about it, and they wanted it for their clubhouse. Charley went down the entrance, explored the cave and realized that it was George's cave. When he got back up to the gang, he said it was a worthless cave to discourage them from wanting to explore the cave. The gang did not quite believe him. When they saw a fawn statue that George had given him, they asked about it. In order to avoid further questions about the cave, Charley ran home, upset that he had allowed them to suspect him. After that, Charley left the gang and began visiting George regularly. George liked to carve statues of famous people into the walls of his cave. He tried to recruit Charley to become an artist. During Charley's final exam session in spring, Charley had no time to visit George. When summer came, he could finally go see George. Instead of finding George, Charley found his former gang who had smashed all of the statues. Charley got angry and fought with Pat, the leader. Charley got badly beaten and lost. Then to get even with his former gang, he decided to join the River Rats, the toughest gang around. He was determined to fight his way to the top of that gang and then go fight Pat again. That's the plot line of "The Cave". However, there is more to a story than the plot. Another important element that was used in this story was the irony. Charley was part of a gang to begin with, but when he met George, he learned how to be an individual and