Monster

Monster. ISBN 0-06-440731-4. Walter Dean Myers. 1999. Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award. Age 13-17. Contemporary Realistic Fiction. African-American young males, Lower socio-economic status.

Steve Harmon, a sixteen-year-old black male, is on trial as an accomplice to the robbery and felony murder of a local drugstore owner. During the trial, Steve alternates journaling about his life in the detention center cell and writing an autobiographical screenplay which recounts the courtroom drama. Steve also wrestles with his conscience through flashbacks of key events which lead up to the robbery. The trial results in Steve’s acquittal, but the author leaves his readers to decide Steve’s innocence for themselves.

This would also be a good book to initiate a dialogue on poverty, peer pressure, and the impact of individual choices one makes. Children might write about a time when they succumbed to peer pressure, the consequences that occurred, and the lesson learned from the experience.

Myers impressively pens a realistic first-person account of the internal struggle of the protagonist while he adds a more objective screenplay, which is portrayed as written by this main character. Myers effectively uses the dialogue in this screenplay to contrast his multi-dimensional main character with the more singular-minded perpetrators and witnesses. These static characters allow readers to be even more captivated as the layers of fear, guilt, defensiveness, and determination are revealed in Steve’s character. The revelation of Steve’s own “personal truths” through multiple formats (his journal, his screenplay, and interspersed flashbacks) engages the reader more than a simple third-person narrative of the court drama would, but adds to the ambiguous sequence of key event that could prove Steve’s innocence to the readers.

In addition, Myers poignantly uses the detention center setting to show the horrors of prison life. The colloquialisms of prisoners add to jail’s dark realities. Readers may be uncomfortable with Steve’s reflections on other inmates’ beatings, rapes, and views of suicide, but they are the key to the cautionary part of this tale. Steve’s setting seems to motivate him to lie about his involvement to avoid going to prison. For the audience, this setting underscores the undesirable consequences of making impulsive, poor choices. Prison life as seen by Steve from the inside is integral to the twists in the plot and fits with the story’s theme.

One clear theme in Myer’s work is the importance of Justice versus Innocence. Steve’s lawyer conveys existing prejudices in the criminal justice system when she tells Steve that being black, male and on trial are huge hurdles that could hurt his case. Readers also find themselves struggling throughout the book between the hope that Steve Harmon is found “not guilty” and the concern that justice may not be served with his acquittal. The protagonist’s innocence is not made clear by the author; as it often occurs in life, it is derived from the opinions and interpretations of the jury of readers.

This novel would be appropriate in a middle school social studies or high school government class as the basis for a discussion on how the judicial branch of government works. For example, students could discuss the roles of judge, jurors, and laywers. They could even write and perform a scene in the book from the juror’s point of view. Alternately, students could research and discuss racial and socio-economic prejudices either in the criminal justice system or in society today.