Hate List

 Tait Berwick                                                                                                                                                   10/19/14

Reading Response: Hate List                                                                                                              809                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

      “I never once said, this is not who I am. Because, maybe, I didn't know who I was” –Eric Kahn Gale, The Bully Book. this quote portrays how Valerie felt in “Hate List”. Everyone around her was targeting harsh opinions at her and she felt extremely alone and abandoned. The page turning book, “Hate List” by Jennifer Brown is about a girl named Valerie, who was involved in a school shooting that was committed by her boyfriend, Nick. In the shooting that Valerie had no idea about, Nick targeted people on his and Valerie’s hate list, a list of people they hated for one reason or another, before turning the gun on himself. The story focuses on Valerie’s struggle after the shooting on being accepted by others. Throughout the book, Valerie is in a mentally vulnerable place, until she finds new friends who support her and give her hope.

       At first, in the beginning and middle of the book Valerie feels judged and isolated. She feels uncomfortable at school because the students at school blame her for the shooting, for what Nick did to everyone. Yet she still defends herself when she is labeled the culprit. In the book, Duce keeps blaming Valerie for the shooting Nick committed, but Valerie defends herself; “ ‘I didn’t want anyone to die,” I practically whispered. Duce gave me one of those raised eyebrow looks. ‘He was you best friend, too, you       know.’ ”(page 42).  This makes Valerie feel lonely and judged even though she knows the massacre was not her fault. Even though Valerie knows what people are saying about her isn’t true, she still feels this way because everyone is shutting her out. This isn’t the only time Valerie feels judged; in the book Valerie’s mom is moody the first few days after the shooting. She had mood swings from comforting Valerie to saying she “couldn’t believe she gave birth to such a monster”(page 141). Valerie’s mom even accuses her of trying to commit murder, page 223; “Are you joining up with them so you can finish the job Nick started?” Obviously, at this point, Valerie feels even more isolated because her own mom is ashamed of her and thinks her own daughter is the cause of the shooting. She even thinks her daughter would plan to kill her classmates! All of these feelings build up until Valerie finally snaps on page 182, Valerie is angry at everyone, herself, Nick, her friends, her parents, because they are not there for her. She feels so unloved and insignificant because the people are supposed to be there for her are judging her. Without the support from the people who were close to her, Valerie had every reason to feel looked down upon and depressed.

       Throughout the book, Valerie works her way out of the dark place. On pages 280-285 Valerie makes it through the first semester. One of the reasons for this is that Jessica and Meghan are there for her and aren’t embarrassed to be seen with her. On page 285 Jessica and Meghan invite Valerie to a party. This boosts Valerie’s self-esteem and mental health because they make her feel like she is one of them, not the murderer everyone else sees her as. The reason Jessica and Meghan want to be Valerie’s friend is because Valerie saved Jessica’s life. Jessica was on the hate list from previously bullying Valerie, calling her “sister death” and picking on. During the school shooting, Valerie leapt in front of Jessica, taking a bullet to save her, she didn’t really want her hurt. This opens Jessica’s eyes to see that Valerie was a good person and didn’t deserve what she had been doing to her. This was such a special connection because it gave Valerie true friends, ones who wouldn’t abandon her after a horrible event. Also throughout the book, even though Valerie didn’t feel like the massacre was her fault, she couldn’t help knowing that so many students and parents blame her. This has been digging into her, deep inside, so appoligizing to the families really helped Valerie mend this scar. Close to the end of the book, Valerie goes to the victim’s houses and apologizes to the victims and parents. At the hospital Valerie apologizes to Ginny, page 372, “And I’m sorry. I mean I’m really, really sorry for what happened to you. Not that it matters, but I still think you’re pretty.” This let Valerie let go of the guilt she had by fixing what the parents and victims thought of her.

       Lastly, Jessica and Meghan help Valerie get better by giving her support and letting her feel like she was a hero, no a murderer. One of the reasons Jennifer Brown made the plot start out with Valerie being in such a dark place to getting mentally stable is to show how much a friend’s support can help a person be more self confident. She also shows how greatly effective judging and targeting someone can be, in terms of bringing them down. I think this lesson is very important for people, especially teens, to know because I know what it feels like to live in this time where all your actions are magnified. In the teen life, when one mistake is made, everyone uses that mistake to define who you are and instead, you should actually support that person. And in “Hate List” this is what really breaks Valerie. So we should take this story and put it in our own life, that one mistake doesn’t make someone a bad person and the best thing to do is to be there for them.

Darkness too Visible

Reading Response: “Darkness Too Visible”                                                                                10/23

         The article, “Darkness Too Visible”, by Megan Cox Gurdon, is about how contemporary young adult novels have changed from the past. The author expresses her opinion on young adult literature being too dark for teens to read. Megan Cox Gurdon manipulates her evidence to support her claim, and only her claim.

         Megan Cox Gurdon gives evidence that only supports her claim. She first states her opinion: “How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear”. She also says that modern authors are writing texts that “can’t be reprinted in a newspaper” and that just because teens can find many deep, disturbing things on the internet, it doesn’t give authors an excuse for more envelope-pushing”. To support her claim, Megan Cox Gurdon only uses evidence biased to her opinion of young adult literature is too disturbing. She uses examples from modern Young adult novels, but doesn’t quote the text; “By contrast, the latest novel by this ‘this generation’s Judy Blume,’ otherwise known as Lauren Myracle, takes place in a small Southern town in aftermath of an assault on a gay teenager. The boy has been savagely beaten and left tied up with a gas pump nozzle shoved down his throat”. Megan Cox Gurdon paraphrased, but did not use actual text evidence from that book, or any of her examples, for that matter, which leads to think that that book may not have been that brutal. Another example of Megan Cox Gurdon doing this is “for example, young Jack is drugged, abducted and nearly raped”. With out actual quotes, it seems as if Megan Cox Gurdon is exaggerating the awful drama in the books and using imagery to make them seem worse than they actually are.

         So even though Megan Cox Gurdon writes her article by using only what seems like dramatized summaries, is contemporary young adult literature really this “horrendous”, “lurid” and “nightmarish” and she makes them out to be? I think not. Megan Cox Gurdon clearly stands against modern teen fiction because she thinks it is too emotional for teens, but I think young adults have the right to decide what they want to read. Teens need to know about all the events that are happening in the real world, and we cannot be kept in a bubble to one day find out about this things by surprise. Teens can also choose not to read a certain book, and we should be able to have that choice.