Personal Response – A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey
             Albert Facey's autobiography, A Fortunate Life, is the story of an ordinary man who survived against extraordinary odds. From becoming a farmhand at the age of eight, to boxing professionally, to returning from WWI after almost a year of combat and raising a family, Bert Facey has achieved some truly remarkable things in his life. In this essay, I will discuss Bert Facey's attitude to others, the similarities between my life and his, and some of the qualities he possesses.
             Bert Facey was a remarkable man who achieved many amazing things in his life. But I cannot honestly say that I enjoyed reading his life story. It lacked the descriptive writing that I have come to love in my favourite authors. It seemed as though it was a very fulfilling life, albeit very different to my own. I found that I was unable to relate to Bert, because we have lived such different lives. I didn't feel any sympathy for him because I did not enjoy his style of writing. I believe that we make our own luck and had Bert wanted to lead a different, perhaps better, life it would have been possible to change his stars.
             Bert Facey has many very admirable qualities. One of the most evident of these is his courage. Courage is defined as the ability to face danger or pain without fear. Bert Facey demonstrated this in many of the adventures he described in his book. One of the episodes in which he showed amazing courage was the well incident when he was working with Jock McKay and Bentley in Jubuck. The gang's task was to clean the buckets out of the bottom of a very deep well. Bert was assigned the task to go down to the bottom of the well and retrieve the buckets. While he was at the bottom of the one hundred and forty foot well, it began to collapse. Bert was trapped and thought for sure he was a 'goner'. But he was courageous, and managed to find a way out of the well wh...