There are some recursion applet examples in the examples directory at: http://cs.millersville.edu/~katz/cs162/examples/recursion/ To look at them on a web page, go to: http://cs.millersville.edu/~katz/cs162/examples/recursion/Recursive.html When thinking about recursion, don't think about unwrapping the recursive calls. Just trust that the method will do what it says it will do. That's why you write methods that do one thing well.