Dan And Joe example essay topic

. Shadows On The Wallis. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Copyright 1980 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor IV. Main Characters: Dan Roberts: Dan is the main character in Shadows On The Wall. He is constantly seeing and feeling some very strange things on his vacation. Every morning he takes a jog very early around Micklegate Bar.

He also makes anew friend on his journey to York, England. Dan is 15 years old. Joe Stanton: Joe is a cab driver. He and Dan become really good friends. Joe is an old but wise man in many ways. He also takes Dan to see all the sites in York and drives all the people around, but mostly the people staying at the Hotel.

Ambrose Faw: He was the leader in the Faw family. He and Joe are also very good friends and they have known each other for almost the whole lives. Rose: Rose was married to Ambrose and had four kids. She is also a psychic like her mother. She is a very kind person.

Nat: Nat was Ambrose's son. He wants to leave the gypsy clan and have adventures when he grows up. He and Dan become good friends and Nat shows Dan around their camp. Nat also keeps bothering Dan because he wants to trade for Dan's belt, but Dan said no because it is the only belt he brought with him. In the end they end up trading anyway. Jasper: He is Ambrose's oldest son.

He is also a mute, but he could talk when he was younger. One day he came running out of the woods scared and never talked again. Dan sometimes hears him singing in the woods. When he told Joe he said it was more like a chant.

Dan has also seen Jasper turn into a type of monster with lime-green hair. Jasper is always staring at Dan. Orlenda: Orlenda is Nat's older sister, she is often looking at Dan. Her grandmother thinks that she is going to run away with a. The grandmother considers Dan a. She barely talks to him but they are always near each other.

Granny: the granny is Rose's mother and she can tell the future. She believes that everyone of the gypsies have a special power. She also knew exactly when she was going to die and she was right. Rachel: Rachel is the youngest of Rose's children and doesn't do much in the book but help around with the little things. Mr. Roberts: He is Dan's dad. All through the book he is acting very strangely on the entire trip Mrs. Roberts: She is Dan's mom, she is also acting very strangely and her and her husband are keeping a secret from Dan.

The story takes place in York, England while Dan and his family are on vacation. Dan finds this very weird that all of a sudden in the middle of the year his parents want to take a vacation to England and spend half of their savings on the trip. Every morning Dan wakes up extra early and he takes a jog around Micklegate Bar. Something strange always happens when he gets close to the ancient ruins.

He always she shadows on the wall and he soon gets extremely cold and scared. He still doesn't know if the shadows are real or not, but one day he was jogging and he went up to the stream and looked at it and saw his reflection. All of a sudden his face was gone and he saw the reflection of an old Roman soldier. He quickly turned around to see if anybody was behind him, but nobody was there. When he looked back at the stream the soldier grabbed him.

He then got up and ran back to the Hotel. When he got back he saw Joe and told him about what had happened (he knew Joe because Joe drove them to the hotel). Then Joe told him that when he was younger that a guy he knew saw Roman soldiers come out of a wall. Joe told him that the guys name was Martindale and that nobody believed his story.

Right after Joe told Dan Mrs. Harrison told Joe that two women were coming to the hotel and to give them a lift. So Joe left to pick them up. Before Joe left he told Dan that Martindale was on a ladder when the soldiers came and he fell off and ran into a corner in the cellar he was in. Then he ran up the stairs.

The cellar was in the Treasurer's house but nobody is allowed down there. Later when Dan went to dinner with his parents heh is parents were sometimes really strange. Sometimes when they ate there would be absolute silence and other time they could not stop laughing and talking. He discovered this in January. Right after he thought about that he then thought he must be dying. Why else would his parents be acting so strange.

Then Dan thought maybe his dad was dying but his dad never went to the doctor. Then he thought his parents were going to get a divorce, because his friend bill went on a vacation and when he got back his parents got a divorce. Since Dan was missing school his teacher told him he had to write a thirty page report on York. So he was constantly looking for more information on York.

Dan's mother was also researching some things. Shew as researching the Roberts family tree. His mother told him that the reason for the trip was for research on the family tree. When they got back to the hotel Dan was walking up the stairs when he heard his father ask his mom if she was going to see some distant relatives the next day. The relatives lived in Selby and Joe was going to drive her. The next day Dan cut through an alley and came upon a small lot were two cab drivers washing their cabs.

One was Joe the other was a man he didn't know with a red face named Sam. He wanted to ask Joe about the trip to selby, but instead he asked him if he needed help. later that night his parents went for a walk so he took a shower first when he was done he went back to his room but remembered that he forgot to brush his teeth. when he went back to the bathroom he didn't turn the light on, but he heard his parents arguing whether or not to tell Dan something, but he didn't hear what. VI. The next day Dan woke up and was waiting for Joe on the steps but he didn't know why.

When Joe arrived he asked Dan if he was busy, Dan went over to him And asked him where he was going. Then Joe told him he needed some pots fixed. So he was going to give them to Ambrose to fix, then Dan decided to join him. On the car ride over Joe told him that when he was younger he would camp with ambrose and that he liked his sister polly. He told Dan that the girl was always staring at him but her father didn't want her to marry a so they left.

When they came back for two years later Polly was married and had a baby. When they got to the gypsy looked at him very strangely. Orlenda looked at him and started laughing. The grandmother stared at him as she walked down the street. Joe gave Ambrose the pots. The Dan asked Rose to tell him his fortune but Rose just told him to come back when he was thirty-five or forty.

When Dan got home he went into his parents room and started going through his things. He started going trough his moms briefcase when he found the family tree paper. When he was looking at it he saw some of the people names were circled and some had question marks under them. Suddenly his dad walked in. His dad explained to him that the names circled died of a rare disease called Huntington's Disease. Dan's grandfather had it and if his dad had it then Dan had a fifty percent chance of having it.

If Dan's dad didn't have it them it would not show up in Dan. Two days later Dan and Joe went to get the pots back but the gypsies were gone. Eventhough they were gone Joe knew exactly where to find them. When they got there Ambrose gave Joe the pots, then they saw Rose crying because granny was dying. The granny told them that she would be dead by the next day. So Joe promised he and Dan would come the next day to the funeral.

That night Dan was in his run when he saw a black bird spread its wings and made a sound. At that instant Dan knew that the granny was dead. That night Dan stuck out and went to the Multiangular tower. When he was there he jumped in He began to scream the leader of the Romans name. When he opened his mouth Ambrose ran and covered his mouth and told him to stay quiet. Dan asked him why he was there and Ambrose told him he was getting soil from where the granny was born to put in here casket with her.

The next day when they went to the funeral Dan and Ambrose didn't even talk about what had happened. Nobody was really that sad because they knew in advance that it was coming. The gypsies put all of the granny's things in a var do and were going to burn so nobody cause ever use her things but they wanted to wait for another gypsy clan. This meant that Dna and Joe had to stay over night because they promised to stay for the whole funeral but Dan didn't want to wait anymore. That ninth he woke up shivering when he saw a Roman soldier on a horse standing over him. The soldier told him to get up.

So Dan put on his boots as loud as he could trying to wake up somebody else. Quickly Dan got up and bolted off in the opposite direction, but the horseman was right on his tail. When Dan got up to a hill the soldier grabbed him and he fell. THen he got up and tackled the soldier and the began to fight. Dan tried many times to stab him with the soldiers dagger but for some reason he couldn't. While the were fighting he noticed the lime-haired monster (jasper).

When he looked into the soldiers face he turned Joe. They were both dripping with sweat and they sat there and talked until sunrise. In the morning the other gypsy clan came and they finished the funeral and burned the granny's things. After Dan and Joe ate they left because Joe knew that they wanted to be alone.

On the way home Dan told Joe about how he saw Ambrose in the tower and that he was getting soil. Then Joe told Dan that the old woman wasn't born in the gardens (Museum Gardens). Before Dan had left the camp he traded his belt with Nat for an old Romany coin. That was the last day Dan was in York.

When he got back to the hotel he took a shower then went to sleep. When his Parents got back They all packed and left. That night Ambrose went to the hotel and asked for Dan but Mrs. Harrison told him that they left. After Ambrose left the hotel he went to the stream and threw Dan's belt in the deepest part of the water. That is how the book ends. VII.

This was a really good book. There were some boring parts, but most of it was good. There were some really good parts in this book, and there of adventurous parts. I think the ending is very confusing..