Summary 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.

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

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?

“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.

In Paul Trout’s “Why We Invented Monster”, he explores the ways of how the term “monsters” came to be from our ancestors and how people view monsters. Trout starts off by naming different types of monsters from basically every myth you can possibly think of. He continues by saying that even though there are many different types of monsters, they all have one thing in common. They eat humans. Cue the ominous music in the background.

Throughout history we see monsters taking many different shapes and sizes. Whether it be a ghoul in the midst of a cold nightly stroll or a mass genocide, monsters are lurking everywhere and our perception of what monsters truly are, is enhancing their growth as a force with which to be reckoned. Fear of the unknown is seen throughout time, but as humans progress we are finding that things we once were afraid of we are less frightening than they once were. Monsters can evoke fear in their targeted victims rather than physically harm their victims. For instance, every year a new horror film is released with the next scary beast, but why do we call something a monster even if we know it is not real? Even certain people and creatures are

The book I chose is called Monster by Walter Dean Myers. This novel won the Coretta Scott King award , the Printz award , and was also a National Book Award Finalist. Monster is the name and thing that Steve considers himself as he has gotten in a bit of trouble. This novel took place in Harlem New York in mid year of 1997. Steve harmon was in a drug store while some of the people he has been seen around the neighborhood with stuck the place up and murdered the owner of the store in cold blood now he is on trial for Felony 1 murder and this is the story of his trail. Our lives compare to each others in many ways. There are thousands of inferences that could be made

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,

How would you feel to be put on trial for a crime you did not commit? In the book, Monster by Walter Dean Myers, this is the case for a sixteen-year-old Harlem boy named Steve Harmon. Steve is on trial for felony murder because he has been accused of being involved in being the lookout for a robbery that took place on December 22nd in an uptown convenience store that resulted in the shooting of Alguinaldo Nesbitt, the convenience store clerk. Steve Harmon is innocent for the reasoning’s of he does not know who Richard Evans is, the convenience store was not empty, and there was no signal.

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.

Monster by Walter Dean Myers The plot of Monster, by Walter Dean Myers, is scary because the King talks Steve into being in his crew with him, which the crew is where they were going to rob the drugstore. King takes the gun from the guy at the store then shoots him and kills him. All the people that were with him, who was his crew, end up getting caught as well and all have to go to court. They then have to go to trial for the murder.

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

The 1931 film, Frankenstein, which was directed by James Whale changed the mad-scientist/horror movie scene permanently. Although it is almost a century old, people are still reenacting it and discussing it. This film is about a young man named Henry Frankenstein. Henry has an obsession with creating life. Fritz, Henry’s assistant, helped collect body parts from recently deceased corpses. The two men got to work, binding the parts together, to create a whole human body. Using electricity from a thunderstorm, they managed to bring the body to life. The assistant was messing around in the lab and switched the brain they were using with a deceased criminal’s brain. Little did they know that the person they created with science would become a psycho killer.

They are under beds, hiding in the dark, and slithering in the sea. The word, “monster”, has a specific meaning to it that most associate with a big, frightening figure. However, use of the word monster has changed throughout time do to pagan influences and American slang. It is still associated with a beastly creature, but can be used to describe amazing feats and wonders as the old French word once did. The definition of Monster has stayed consistent due to storytelling, yet evolved from its humble beginnings.

Monsters run free in epic poems of centuries far past; horrific, villainous creatures of fantasy who illustrate all that is bad in the world and stand for the tribulations the epic hero much overcome. The Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf is no different. Some are born of, and in turn give birth to legends, such as the fire-breathing dragon, while others are tied to the bible. In studies, Beowulf's monsters are explained and will continue to be analyzed as symbolic of countless different ideas. In relation to each other and the epic's hero, the monsters of Beowulf represent the ever-present flaws of humanity and the monstrous feelings or behaviors that over take the mind in a moment of weakness, leading to eventual downfall.