'Monster' by Walter Dean Myers, Illustrated by Christopher Myers

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.   

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). 

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). 

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.

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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.