1.

Two times Josh’s fight or flight response was activated would be 1) when he first ran into the four boys his age and they started to taunt him; teasing and saying
“hey nice jacket” and “why don’t you give us your jacket”. Josh was not expecting this and his first thought was to fight and not give up his jacket, but instead he just dropped his jacket and ran. Hence he had a flight response for that specific encounter. The second time that Josh’s fight or flight response was activated occurred when he saw the four boys a second time, but instead or fleeing he chose a different path, he was not going to let the boys walk over him once again so… he chose to fight it. He watched the boys previously that day and saw how they acted and what had affected them and he took advantage of that.
When the boys approached Josh and his box of coyote remains they tried to take it from him, but Josh had a different idea. He played a mind game and used the coyote to imitate them as well as weird them out a little bit. When Josh said “if you keep acting like that you’re going to lose her” the boys were caught off guard and confused. In addition to that Josh kept talking about what they did and how they acted and eventually they just left. Josh’s first experience taught him that is isn’t okay to let people walk over you and that was a coming of age for him. When he was approached the second time he had a new outlook and that made it possible for him to outsmart the four “tough guys”. If that was me I would have instantaneously had a flight response because I have weak instincts and I run from my fears. I admire Josh’s willingness to not physically fight but to fight with his knowledge.

2.

In my opinion I think that the trickster has internal conflict as well as external conflict. The external conflict occurs when Josh is physically threatened with violence; resulting in something being stolen from him, but beyond this is the internal conflict of how to deal with the situation after it has occurred. Most people are affected more by the aftermath of an external conflict, because once an event happens it’s difficult to forget and you have to deal with the consequences of that event. For example after the boys steal Josh’s jacket the story says “He still felt unnerved, off balance. He couldn’t even go out of the house without looking over his shoulder. He felt uncomfortable around people in a way he hadn’t before. All because of some jerks” this shows just how much of an internal effect that the external conflict had on Josh. I think it’s the external conflicts that lead to an even worse internal conflict.

4. There are several points in the story where Josh either misleads the reader about the outcome of events or doubts his own actions. One time is when he was talking to the teacher “Do you want to go out for a coffee? He asked her straight out. “I’d love to”. OK, so that last bit was how he rewrote the conversation afterward, sitting on the bus. In actual fact he’d taken the box from her and sputtered something like, “see you around”.
This just infers that he has a high self-respect and likes to think superior of himself. So he makes up these stories to mislead the reader about the events that take place. Another example of Josh’s misleading stories is when the story says “He dropped the coat and sprang into Kung Fu readiness. OK so that’s where the replay deviated a bit from what actually happened that night. In actual fact he’d dropped the jacket and ran”. I think
Josh’s character just wants to look cool because he makes up a story but then afterwards he realizes that it actually didn’t happen this way and it actually happened in a completely opposite matter. I think that maybe Josh’s character is struggling to find himself and doesn’t want to admit certain things about his personality or maybe he has a multi personality disorder. I don’t specifically know these things but I can infer them by reading the story.
5. There’s several