Tanya+Sykes+Lens+2

Tanya Sykes Lens 2 Michael Sherry 2/7/11    Readers-Response Monster In Philadelphia, the percentage of a black male spending four years in prison is much higher than the percentage of a black male spending four years in college. This harsh fact is an epidemic in every urban society in the United States, which is why it is so important to educate young people, especially young black people and urban youth on the consequences of associating in criminal activities. The novel // Monster //, written by novelist Walter Dean Myers would make a great catalyst for teaching about these consequences to a young audience, whether they are African American or not. In his novel, Myers depicts the story of a young boy on trial for participating in the murder of a store clerk. Myer’s drama is the kind of story young adults can relate to because many urban teenagers know someone or know of someone in the same situation as Steve who is the young protagonist in the novel. Unfortunately, I myself am in the category that knows someone in Steve’s situation. My neighbor Antoine was both my knight and shining armor and my bully growing up on 2053 West Boston Street in Philadelphia. Some days he would protect me against other bullies in the neighborhood, and other days he would become my abuser. When we both enter high school, I was surprise to see him skipping school and associating with men in their twenties. It was not until I attempted to skip school one day to hang out with him that I found out, he was selling drugs with is new “friends”. I constantly worried about Antoine; I had visions of him being arrested or finding him dead on a side walk. My friends and I would try to persuade him that his lifestyle was going to end his life, but he did not listen and continued that dangerous lifestyle. Unfortunately, Antoine did heed my warning, and he is in prison today for armed robbery. The story of Steve is a compelling and interesting story and readers who are not African-American or from an urban city would be able to relate to Steve’s tragic story. Before adolescents, children are supposed to distinguish between right and wrong and they are taught to believe that if a person commits a crime they are a bad person. Steve’s situation in // Monster //will help students see that everyone is not good or bad, people just make bad decisions in life which comes with severe consequences. In one of Steve’s journal entries in the book, Steve states that for him jail is the scariest place on earth and that nothing can ever frighten him more than jail: “How could he scare me? I go to bed every night terrified out of my mind. I have nightmares when I close my eyes. I am afraid to speak to these people in the jail with me” (Myers 96). Any reader who reads this passage automatically feels some type of sympathy for Steve because they could probably relate to a time where they were in a difficult situation, they were scared and they could not do anything about it. In his personal journal, Steve does not indicate whether he actually was the lookout man for King and Bobo, so we as readers do not know if Steve is actually guilty, but what we do know is that Steve is a person with real feelings and emotions and he is not the monster the prosecutor Petrocelli describe in her opening argument.