Myers, Walter Dean. Monster.
Illus. Christopher Myers. New York:
HarperTeen, 1999.
There is a mirror over the steel
sink in my cell. It’s six inches high, and scratched with the names of some guys who were here before me. When I look into the small rectangle,
I see a face looking back at me but I don’t recognize it. It
doesn’t look like me. I couldn’t have changed that much in a few months. I
wonder if I will look like myself when the trial is over (Myers 1-2).
This is our first introduction to
Steve Harmon, a sixteen year-old boy on trial for murder in New York City. Walter Dean Myers’ acclaimed novel, Monster, follows Steve through his
trial, where he wrestles with the question of whether or not he is, as labeled
by the prosecuting attorney, a monster.
At first glance, it seems as if Steve was in the wrong place at the
wrong time, but flashbacks interspersed through the trial testimony, reveal
small details that aren’t discussed in the trial, nor in the journal Steve
keeps during the trial, a journal his lawyer admonishes him “not to write
anything in… that [he does] not want the prosecutor to see” (Myers 137). The small disparities between the journal
entries and the testimony call into question Steve’s declared innocence and
leads the reader to ponder the question: is he truly innocent of the crime or
guilty?
Monster, the winner of the inaugural Printz Award, is a searing
indictment of the justice system, the prison system, and the social structure
that “links the credibility of males to displays and postures of toughness,
physical strength, and the threat or use of violence” (Earp and Katz qtd. in
Groenke, Maples, and Henderson 34). The
novel also questions the morality many of the prisoners employ in their ability
to “separate themselves from their acts that permitted them to commit those
acts in the first place” (Goodson 28).
Myers noticed a common thread in the stories he heard from various
prisoners he interviewed as part of the research for Monster. In an interview
with Lori Atkins Goodson, he states,
I was shocked to find out how
many of the inmates whose stories I was hearing were surprised to find
themselves in prison… They uniformly thought of themselves as good people who
had made some mistake, which had taken them afoul of the law… It was a common
occurrence to find an interviewee speaking of himself… in the first person when
talking about their upbringing, and then switching to the third person when
speaking of the crime of which they had been convicted (28).
Myers states that it was this
disconnect from their actions that formed the backbone of Monster (Goodson 28). Myers writes the novel as a hybrid of Steve’s
journal entries and a screenplay that Steve also writes as the trial
progresses. (Steve also happens to attend a magnet school where he studies
filmmaking.) The different formats
represent Steve’s ability to separate himself from the scene of the crime. The journal is written in first person, but
the screenplay places Steve firmly in the third person, although it shows, in
Steve’s words, his experience of the trial (Myers 4). As Steve is the director, screenwriter, and
star of his movie, he is able to shape the audience’s perception of the other
members of his “cast” though the use of stage directions and camera angles or
descriptions of the other cast members that focus on details, like Osvaldo’s
gang tattoos (Schneider 20).
This disconnect is also evident
in the testimony of the witnesses called by the prosecution. Many of them have been accused of crimes
themselves, but have finagled a deal with the prosecution to exchange their
testimony for a lighter sentence or a plea deal. It is not always clear whether or not the
witnesses are actually telling the truth, other than their testimony that
claims they are. The witnesses exemplify
a central tenant of the novel: how do we know when someone is telling the
truth? Furthermore, the witnesses could
very well be truthful, but their status as an inmate colors the reader’s (and
jury’s) perceptions of their testimony. Osvaldo,
one of the prosecution’s witnesses, is timid and in fear of his life on the
stand, but Steve’s flashback of an encounter with Osvaldo reveals a very
different persona, one that scoffs at Steve for his reluctance to engage in the
kind of lifestyle accepted by the other males in the neighborhood and has a
confrontational attitude.
One of the other themes of the novel centers on the idea that all young men of color are the same in the eyes of a jury. Kathy O’Brien, Steve’s lawyer, spends much of the trial attempting to make the jury see Steve as separate from his co-defendant, James King. It is a task made more difficult by the fact that both Steve and James are African-American and “look like most of the other prisoners in the jail, so how is the jury to tell that he is any different from the unsavory witnesses and other defendants?” (Schneider 20). Steve even notes in more than one instance that his own lawyer is unsure of his guilt or innocence, perhaps subconsciously grouping Steve with James because of Steve’s race and a belief that a person will say or do anything to avoid a lengthy jail sentence.
One of the other themes of the novel centers on the idea that all young men of color are the same in the eyes of a jury. Kathy O’Brien, Steve’s lawyer, spends much of the trial attempting to make the jury see Steve as separate from his co-defendant, James King. It is a task made more difficult by the fact that both Steve and James are African-American and “look like most of the other prisoners in the jail, so how is the jury to tell that he is any different from the unsavory witnesses and other defendants?” (Schneider 20). Steve even notes in more than one instance that his own lawyer is unsure of his guilt or innocence, perhaps subconsciously grouping Steve with James because of Steve’s race and a belief that a person will say or do anything to avoid a lengthy jail sentence.
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| Part of Steve's journal Photo by: L. Propes |
Susan Groenke and Melissa
Youngquist classify Monster as a
postmodern novel due to Myers’ use of the following characteristics of
postmodern literature: identity in flux as a theme, genre eclecticism,
interplay between word and image, and active readers (506-507). Steve’s identity is never settled during the
novel, and even at the end, he is not able to definitively answer who he really
is (Groenke and Youngquist 506). Groenke
and Youngquist characterize Steve as in a constant struggle to “understand who
he is as an African American male, a star student, and a loving son and brother
in a society that tells him he can only be one of two things: a thug or a
sellout” (506). As discussed earlier,
the novel employs multiple formats to expose the reader to Steve and his
personality. The epistolary sections
provide a glimpse into Steve’s inner thoughts and feelings, revealing his
terror at the thought of spending the next twenty years behind bars. The rest of the text of the novel employs a
conventional screenplay format that serves to distance Steve in the journal
from the Steve in the trial. Flashbacks
that show Steve in scenes with his family, James King (the other person on
trial), and other people from his neighborhood provide a level of ambiguity
that contributes to the questions of Steve’s innocence. Christopher Myers’ illustrations show
photographs of Steve in various places: the prison, the drugstore (presumably
the day of the robbery and murder), and even a courtroom drawing of Steve and
his attorney when his verdict is read.
The photographs, which are paired with relevant text, also aim to create
an image of Steve that leads the reader to further question Steve’s motives and
innocence (Groenke and Youngquist 507). All
of these elements combine together to force the reader to “fill in the gaps and
pull together discrete parts or narrative strands” in order to come to a
conclusion about Steve (Groenke and Youngquist 507).
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| A page of screenplay format Photo by: L. Propes |
Myers comments in an essay at the
end of the novel, “kids don’t think about things until after they happen…
That’s typical of kids -- you do things first, then you think about it. By the time you think about it, you’re in big
trouble. I think the problem with so many young people is that violence gets to
be a resource. When nothing else works
for you, violence always does, and you’re always drawn to it” (292). Those fingerprints, so to speak, are all over
Monster. Steve does something (although it’s left
ambiguous in the novel just what he does) that implicates him in the robbery
and murder, but doesn’t think about the ramifications of where he was at that
specific moment until well after the event and he’s sitting in jail. At the end of the novel, Steve is still
examining his actions. The other
characters -- Osvaldo, James, Bobo, and the other inmates in the prison --
personify the second part of Myers’ statement.
They have grown so accustomed to committing acts of violence and getting
what they want out of it, that it’s become their go-to method of coping with
life. Steve comments on the level of violence
within the prison in his journal: “Violence in here is always happening or just
about ready to happen. I think these
guys like it -- they want it to be normal because that’s what they’re used to
dealing with” (Myers 144).
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| One of Christopher Myers' illustrations Photo by: L. Propes |
Monster is an interesting novel that presents “kids that were not
‘good’, ‘smart’, and growing up in the perfect home” (Blumenstetter 39). It gives students, especially minority
students, a character who looks like them, their friends, or family members and
shows a “world they live in every day” (Blumenstetter 39). One level of difficulty students might have with
it lies in the postmodern structure of the novel, as displayed in Groenke and
Youngquist’s experience teaching Monster to
a ninth-grade English class (508-510).
The novel is largely linear in its structure, but the flashbacks are not
conspicuously set apart from the trial testimony, so it might be confusing to
some readers to see an event that isn’t directly related to the trial in the
middle of a trial. If students are not familiar with the structure of a
screenplay or a script, they might have a bit of an adjustment period with the
technical terminology Steve uses in the stage directions and camera
angles. There are small bits of dark
humor scattered through Steve’s journal entries when the inmates discuss their
cases. One anecdote in particular exemplifies this in
which a man who was charged with armed robbery, assault, and menacing, among other things, claims that because the jewelry store had an automatic locking system, he wasn’t able to actually steal anything and didn’t have a gun anyway, he shouldn’t be charged with a crime. The text is rich with bits and pieces like this that can instigate
debate in a classroom apart from the main question of the novel. Students who are fans of Law and Order marathons will probably love this book.
Teachers who choose to offer Monster as either a whole-class reading
or an option in a literature circle can have their students research statistics
for the incarceration rates of minorities and the crimes for which they’ve been
convicted. They can also debate Steve’s
guilt or innocence, using evidence gleaned from the novel. Students can also present ideas to help
students like Osvaldo before he becomes part of the system. Some classes might need structured guidance
to read this novel, given its unorthodox format.
Monster not only won the Printz Award, it also won a Coretta Scott
King honor and was a National Book Award finalist.
If a teacher wants to compare the
relative merits of the Printz winner and honor books from 2000, the honor books
were: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson,
Skellig by David Almond, and Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger.
Myers is also the author of: Fallen Angels, Sunrise Over Fallujah, Scorpions,
Slam!, Bad Boy, Autobiography Of My Dead Brother, Riot, and Darius & Twig, just to name a
few. For a complete list of his
published works, please visit his website.
Myers is a prolific author of award-winning fiction and nonfiction.
Works Cited
Blumenstetter,
Kerri Gallagher. "Walter Dean Myers Writes for Inner-City Students." Social
Science Docket 12.2 (2012): 39-40. Web. Education
Research Complete. 16 June 2014.
Goodson, Lori
Atkins. "Walter Dean Myers: A Monster of a Voice for Young Adults." The
ALAN Review. 36.1 (2008): 26-31. Web. Free
E-Journals. 16 June 2014.
Groenke, Susan
L., Joellen Maples, and Jill Henderson. "Raising “Hot Topics” through
Young Adult Literature." Voices from the Middle 17.4 (2010): 29-36.
Web. National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE). 16 June 2014.
Groenke, Susan
Lee, and Michelle Youngquist. "Are we Postmodern Yet? Reading Monster with
21st-Century Ninth Graders." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy
54.7 (2011): 505-13. Web. Education
Research Complete. 16 June 2014.
Myers, Walter
Dean. Monster. Ills. Christopher
Myers. New York: HarperTeen, 1999. Print.
Schneider, Dean. "The Novel as Screenplay:
Monster and Riot by Walter Dean Myers." Book Links 19.2 (2010):
20-3. Web. Academic Search Complete.
16 June 2014.
