Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Summary:
Steve Harmon is a 16 year old in the Manhattan Detention Center being held on trial for a murder he might of have done. He’s in his cell and he talks about how anything you do a person might not like it and suddenly say they are going to mess you up, that’s all they talk about in that place “messing you up”. They want to charge Steve with the death penalty but the judge thinks that’s a little over board and wants to give him life in jail, which is also bad because he is still young and is being charged with adult charges. The story starts and Steve connects this part of his life as walking into a movie with no plot and no beginning, and black and white, and then he states to himself that he can probably make his own movie and writes it in the little notebook that the jail is letting him keep. He is writing this “movie” as it is happening. Not only does Steve write about the trial and his time in jail but at the same time he gets flashbacks from before he was in all this mess. The next scene opens up with Osvaldo in the stand saying his part of the story, and then asked questions about his history. Later they move to a scene in the Visitors’ area in the Detention Center in which Mr. Harmon which is Steve’s dad is talking to him, tear eyed. Next your find a letter that Steve wrote explaining that he has never seen his dad cry like that because he wasn’t crying like he a though a man would. Then Steve asks himself why he is there when he never did anything to Mr. Nesbitt the owner of the drugstore that died while the robbery. Later on Henry and Bobo get testified and both indentify one person which was James King and Steve Harmon. We find out that after Bobo and James robbed the store they had spent some of the money on fried chicken and then split the rest and that Steve never got a share of that money. They finish another day of the trial and then Miss O’Brien, who is Steve’s lawyer, visits Steve and somehow Steve thinks that because Miss O’Brien was patting his hands that it symbolized for her not having more hope on them winning the case. The next day Steve and Moore are testified and nothing new is introduced that we didn’t know, the trial is over and when the jury reads the verdict they say that they found James King and Bobo guilty but Bobo was already in jail, Steve Harmon was found not guilty.
Quote:
“I hate this place. I hate this place. I can’t write it enough times to make it look the way I feel. I hate, hate, hate this place!!” (Myers 46).
Reaction:
The style of this story is script like because he is really writing it as a movie. In between you can read some letters he wrote of a certain day during his time. Since Steve is 16, of course he is going to hate the Detention Center because no one likes to feel threatened whenever you do something. There’s going to be some parts in your life in which you don’t feel like you belong and I think this is a perfect example of that because at his age he should be in school and not being held on for a crime he might of had committed. Throughout the book what changed his ways was the way he noticed how people would be around him, for example his father when he cried Steve was puzzled because he never thought a man cried like the way his dad did. The monster was what steve was becoming while his time in prison; he would look somewhere and get scared because probably someone was giving him the dirty look or he would start talking to himself.
