Bridge to Terabithia Ambition

Jess's desire to be "the fastest" runner is practically the first thing we learn about him. We know right away that he has talent and determination. We also see him trying to carve out a place for himself and achieve something at school, and really become known for something: for being "the very best." That desire to be the best says good things about his character and his moral state.

This is the root of Jess' ambition: winning. The "taste of winning" – of that short-lived glory – inspired him to train all summer and find a place for himself in the school hierarchy the following year by being the fastest runner. It gave him purpose and direction. Even though it happened "only once," it was enough to make him completely motivated to win the following year.

This is all about context. We readers know Jess isn't lazy and so we side with him. We saw him get up and train for his race while the whole house was still asleep, and we just witnessed his older sisters bamboozle their mother into letting them get out of chore duty. Despite that, Jess is the one who gets called lazy and who has to do the most around the house. It just doesn't seem fair.

Humiliation ensues. Jess worked all summer for this – we saw in the first chapter how hard he trained, and how tired it made him – and now he doesn't even make it to the final round. The story he had written for himself about how this "day" and this year would go is instantly unwound – instead of being fastest, he's not even in the top four.

It's all over for Jess's dream of being "the best runner" by the end of fifth grade, and it's all because he stood up for a girl and for equality. He was the one who fought for Leslie's ambition to run in the race and, because of that, wasn't able to fulfill his own ambition of winning himself. What's sad about this is that Leslie wins so definitively that no one else takes pleasure in racing or competing anymore.

With the excitement of the races dissipating, and with his new friendship with Leslie strengthening him, Jess returns his attention to drawing. His ambition to draw well is as strong as his desire to run fast. Here, though, he seems to get results less quickly. He knows what he wants to do but can't seem to achieve it.

Numbly, Jess reflects on his achieved and once-longed-for ambition. It's morbid, but he's at the very place where Leslie died, looking at the rope that failed her when she was crossing the creek. Implicitly, we understand that Jess feels like he might have failed her too, by not being there to convince her to wait and go to Terabithia only when the creek calmed down. Instead of thinking about those things, he turns his attention to the fact that he's become the "fastest runner."

This isn't how Jess wanted to win that race or become "the fastest runner" at all. Now he has what he wanted at the very beginning of the book, but it's meaningless. He's the fastest runner now, but it's not because he improved, or trained harder, or got fancy new running shoes. It's because his competition can't race against him anymore.

By absorbing Leslie's ambition into his own, Jess's desire for shaping his future life becomes deeper and more profound. It's no longer about being just the fastest runner in fifth grade, or creating awesome drawings. It's about making a lasting contribution to the world that reflects what Leslie taught him and helps memorialize her in another way. Instead of striving for records or material things, he will "pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength." Because she can't keep on giving that "vision and strength," he'll take on the responsibility of turning those qualities into "beauty and caring," and send them back out into the world.

Even though Leslie's no longer there, she's still able to give Jess one last push of encouragement. Through her parents' gift of resources and supplies, she encourages Jess to keep learning, thinking, and drawing. While Jess doesn't have Leslie to tell him stories, he'll have her books, where she found those stories, to inspire him.