Middle School in "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the Pevensie siblings are split up.  Peter and Susan are with their parents in the United States, and Edmund and Lucy are in the UK at school.  The worst part of the whole situation is the fact that they have to live with their aunt, uncle, and cousin.  Their cousin Eustace is an annoying, arrogant, little know-it-all and he doesn't like Lucy and Edmund either.  However, when the painting of the ship in Lucy's room starts to move and Lucy and Edmund are taken back to Narnia, Eustace accidentally comes too.  Through the movie the siblings and Eustace go through adventure after adventure alongside Prince Caspian and the crew of the Dawn Treader, and Eustace learns what it means to work as a part of a team and how to get a long with others.

Eustace embodies quite a few stereotypes of middle school.  First of all he is pretty arrogant.  He obviously feels like he knows everything, and as a result has no qualms about correcting people he has deemed to be wrong.  I believe that this behavior is caused by another stereotype of middle school: insecurity.  Eustace is very insecure.  He wants to fit in and so he tries to show everyone how cool he is and how much he knows.  He wants to connect, but is trying a little too hard to prove that he is absolutely perfect.  The last stereotype of middle school he portrays is the awkward coming into himself that happens for a lot of kids.  Granted, this part happens when he is a dragon, but he eventually comes around and starts functioning as a part of the team.  He really goes from me-focused to us-focused.  He even fights the temptation to go back to his old ways and decides to put that last sword on Aslan's table.  He makes a conscious choice to put everyone else first, and as a result he is finally able to get a long with the rest of the crew.

Eustace was the only character in middle school and I was too shy to be him, but I was very awkward.  I got good grades, but I tried to be as invisible as possible because 6th grade was my first year in public school.  I didn't know anyone, and needed to watch how people interacted before I could feel comfortable really getting to know anyone.  I did embody the insecure part of Eustace's character though.  The difference there is that I coped with my insecurity by making my walls higher.  My thinking was that if I didn't let anyone in then no one would know anything was wrong with me.  I did not enjoy middle school, but I can look back now and know that it really was a pivotal time in my development.  I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't gone through middle school.