Analysis Of Monster By Walter Dean Myers

The novel Monster by Walter Dean Myers is the book I chose to read and do my essay on. The genre Walter chose for the book Monster is realistic fiction. The novel was published in 1999 which is a year after I was borning. The reason why I chose this Novel is because a teacher recommended the book to me a couple year ago but, I never got a chance to read it. I always assumed the book was good because it won three awards. The first award the book won was the National Book Award for young people’s literature. The second award the book won was the Michael L. Printz Awards. The third award the book won was called the Coretta Scott King Award Honor all in which the book won in the same year 2000. The book is told from the perspective of a young african american teenager named steve harmon. Steve lives in harlem where the story takes place. One night steve chose to hang with a bad group of friends and was in a robbery. During the robbery one of Steve’s friend kills the cashier. Now Steve is in jail and going back and forth to court hoping to be proven not guilty of felony murder. Steve and I lives are alike in many different ways although we come from different backgrounds.

Pamela Colloff’s “The Innocent Man,” is an eye-opening, gut-wrenching essay in which Colloff beautifully takes a high complexity prejudiced case of a guilty murder verdict and successfully brings to light her inspiring character Michael Morton’s true innocence in a flawed justice system. Suspense, sadness and frustration are effectively provoked from the reader about Michael’s tragic nightmare which persists for over two decades of time. A nightmare which begins when Michael returns home from work on August 13, 1986, to find out his dead wife was beaten to death in their bed. This is only the beginning of what Colloff unfolds in her writing of Michael’s twenty-five-year agonizing battle behind bars. Step by step Colloff’s marvelous writing

When analyzed online many of the definitions you will find for the word monster include: a strange or horrible imaginary creature, one who deviates from normal or acceptable behavior, or an animal of strange and/or terrifying shape. (Merriam Webster) When observing the “Monster Theory” by Jeffrey Cohen and the 7 theses that he provides in this text, one can begin to somewhat disagree with these formal definitions and attempt to say that it has an even greater meaning. Monsters might scare us and frighten us because of their physical appearances but also can provide us with possible solutions to gaps and uncertainties in our mind that Sigmund Freud would label as “The Uncanny”. I can only but agree with

The idea of what a monster is and how it pertains to modern day society has fascinated readers and writers for decades. Before taking this class, I was aware of what a monster is and the function it served in today’s society. Furthermore, after taking this class, I am now aware of what a monster truly is, and what really separates a monster from a regular person. The piece of text that I mainly chose to focus on and elaborate closely to demonstrate the aspects of a monster is appropriately named, Monster, by Walter Dean Myers. The reason I chose this piece of literature is because, Monster thoroughly elaborates what a monster is in todays society and how it functions in the modern day world. In this essay I will elaborate on

1. Monster is a novel written in a screenplay format with Steve’s journal entries mixed in throughout. Do you think this is an effective format for the book? Why or why not?

Rhetorical Analysis of “ Monster Culture ” In his opinion piece at the beginning of the book Monster Theory: Reading Culture , entitled “ Monster Culture (Seven Theses) ” , Jeffery Jerome Cohen tries his best to detail to his audience why monsters are symbolic of those things which e xist on the edges of culture. What monsters are changes according to the ideas and convention s most disruptive to any given culture at any point in time.

Why should a kid be tried as an adult and go to prison for no other reason than knowing a criminal? There were countless terrible choices made in this story, but these choices were not made by Steve Harmon. Steve was not the lookout for this robbery and definitely didn’t kill Mr. Nesbitt. There are three main reasons that prove Steve’s innocence: on multiple occasions, Steve said he was not there, he never was paid for his “participation”, and Mrs. Henry only saw two people both of which are known.

The basis of criminal justice in the United States is one founded on both the rights of the individual and the democratic order of the people. Evinced through the myriad forms whereby liberty and equity marry into the mores of society to form the ethos of a people. However, these two systems of justice are rife with conflicts too. With the challenges of determining prevailing worth in public order and individual rights coming down to the best service of justice for society. Bearing a perpetual eye to their manifestations by the truth of how "the trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both" (Hitchens, 2003, para. 5).

“Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria” - Alan Greenspan. New York author, Alan Greenspan, here is explaining that the threat fear presents is really no different than the state of intensity caused by euphoria. In Andrew J. Hoffman’s anthology, Monsters, there is substantial evidence that both fear and euphoria are inflicted upon men, by female monsters. The two threats men typically face against women are temptation and emasculation. Thus, in mythology and folklore, female monsters exemplify the impulse of desire (sexually) for men, and male weakness. These are creature that are lusted after and yet, still feared because of their power. Men find female monsters both fearsome and euphoric and will always threaten their dominance and control.

There is such kind of monsters, remain their appearance as a human, yet the things they do can only describe as monstrosities. They are not monsters in books and literature, a fear of unknown or sexual desires. People were, or still are facing actual brutal violence or psychological terror from those monsters. More importantly, the monster being talked here is one of our kind. They are human, yet described as “inhuman”, under the inhuman category of Stephen T. Asma’s book On Monsters, a bloody history, a dark past of humanity have been introduced as a monster. It is Khmer Rouge’s infamous security prison S21: the representation of the massacre took place in Cambodia in 20th century and this kind of monster, unfortunately, is still relevant to the world, even till this day.

Monster is an example of what Patty Campbell would call a “landmark book.” Texts such as these “encourage readers to interact with the text and with one another by employing a variety of devices, among them ambiguity” (Campbell 1) Because it is told through the eyes of Steve himself, the plot can be difficult to decipher. It is ambiguous whether he is innocent or guilty of being involved with the crime. Steve learned to make things unpredictable from his film teacher Mr. Sawicki who teaches him, “If you make your film predictable, they’ll make up their minds about it long before it’s over” (19). Steve took his teacher’s advice and made this film script entirely unpredictable,

Imagine the punches, the kicks, the smashing on the table, just to realize the character traits can change everything. Monster by Walter Dean Myers evolves on the fact that being tough is key within life. Steve Harmon, 16 year old boy, black male, is being accused of felony murder. A court case involving James King and Steve Harmon is taking place to see who is not guilty. Steve writes in his journal of the experiences in jail. Through Steve’s writing it is clear that one must be strong and avoid showing weakness.

Monster by Sanyika Shakur yields a firsthand insight on gang warfare, prison, and redemption. “There are no gang experts except participants (xiii)” says Kody Scott aka. Monster. Monster vicariously explains the roots of the epidemic of South Central Los Angeles between the Crips and the Bloods that the world eventually witnessed on April 29, 1992. As readers we learn to not necessarily give gangs grace but do achieve a better understanding of their disposition to their distinct perception in life.

“ Zoom” a meteor flew over Maple Street. It is 6:43 P.M. at Maple Street. The power went off, the phone stopped working, and the radio wasn’t working.The plot is realistic in “THe Monsters are due on Maple street because, people could be monsters, it is a street called Maple Street, and the power can go off, then Les Goodman car started by itself.

The study I chose was the Monster Study, it was a study that took place at the University of Iowa in 1939 by two female researchers named Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor. They conducted an experiment on stuttering. This experiment was done on 22 orphan children in Davenport, Iowa. The children were separated into two groups, the first group received positive speech therapy where the children were praised for how good their speech was. In the second group the children were taught bad speech therapy and the children were belittled for every time they did not speak the right way. At the end of the experiment the normal-speaking children from group two that was belittled developed negative psychological effects, and