Week 4 Post 1

Myers, W.D. (1999). Monster. New York: HarperCollins.

Monster by Walter Dean Myers is one of the Traditional/Multicultural selections for this week because it explores the ethnic diversity of New York City and helps non-urban young adults not only understand the problems and dangers of living a big city but the meaning of a person's character. This blog will explore Myers use of limited omniscient point of view to get at the big question at the heart of the book:  How can we know someone is telling the truth?   

    In limited omniscient point of view we know everything about one character, here Steve Harmon, an aspiring film maker. Myers effects this by constructing Monster as the shooting script of the film Steve plans to make to recount his experience as one of the multiple suspects and then defendants in a felony murder case that goes to trial. Myers intertwines entries from the journal Steve keeps of his experience with courtroom dialogue - judge, defense attorneys, prosecutor, defendants and spectators - , the prison where Steve is held and script setting instructions like camera angle and type of shot (close up, long, medium, etc.) letting readers construct the novel's plot and characters. 

    In a nutshell four individuals are accused of planning a drugstore robbery during which the drugstore owner is murdered. Steve Harmon is the alleged lookout for the robbery. Myers never has Steve tell us directly that he was an accomplice. We only have hints he might have been: A dialogue between him and Osvaldo another alleged perpetrator; his not wanting to write in his journal what he saw happen in the drugstore; and Detective Karyl's saying that the other perpetrators said after the robbery it was Steve he turned back and shot the store owner. We also have Steve's suspicion that his defense attorney Miss O'Brien thinks he is guilty as well as her coaching him on how to take the stand and answer in a way that shows he is innocent. 

 

This book works because Myer makes us the reader a kind of jury: We are never told what actually happened. We have to piece it together like the jury in the book. Throughout the novel we the readers ask ourselves, "Was Steve Harmon an accomplice?" Like the picture above where the person looking into he mirror is not the person reflected, is Steve Harmon lying about his innocence? When he is acquitted and Miss O'Brien refuses to embrace him as well as Steve's December 5 journal ending the book do we have the truth: Steve was an accomplice!.

    The book is challenging and wonderful because the reader is asked to look at whether s/he knows when someone else is telling the truth and being able to back up her/his conclusion. It also challenges young readers to define and evaluate what a person's true character is and of what importance it is.These are both things with which young adults are faced: Like Steve Harmon they will have to live with the consequences of lying and/or telling the truth.
    Memorable Quote from last page:  "I want to look at myself a thousand times for one true image." When I read this, Irealize I have looked at myself ten thousands of times and that one image would never be enough. I am a diverse, multi-faceted, complex, contradictory yet centered human being. A better quote would be "The best simplicity comes from never ameliorating but embracing and celebrating the complexity from which it is born."