Many students have commented that
Monster is a 'negative' story. Do you agree? What makes a story 'negative'? What is a 'happy' or 'positive' story? Is it important to only read stories that are completely happy? What can we learn from stories with difficult plots and characters?
10 comments:
See. You don't exactly get the point to why I called it a 'negative' book. It's the conflict altogether; the fact that the environment around Timken is quite like this book. Bad things happen to students; this mayhaps of happened to a student before but not exactly at Timken. The point is that this school is built on a lot of negativity; fights, pregnancy rate, ect. All negative things and adding onto the negativity about a boy named Steve getting falsely accused of a felony he did not do is negativity, having people against you. It doesn't matter what we learn from the stories, its the fact that we're trying to enlighten and put joy into students. I don't read depressing books; like the books we've had for the past three years. We need a book with a real message, a secret to life sort of thing. Like I said before The Secret is a wonderful book that has changed the lives of many. You can't change a person's life with feeding them negativity. I apologize if I'm not answering the question how its suppose to be answered, but I'm a free thinker. I will not allow my mind to be taken into the system of answering mildly and watch as we're 'forced' to read this book. I'm NOT saying its a bad book, because it's not a bad book, trust me. It's just that this school, via students in general have to much negativity in their lifestyles to begin with, why add to it? I mean great simple read, but really every All School Read has been focused on bad event books.
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- C.C
I agree very strongly that this is a highly negative story. While an... Interesting read, Monster shows nothing but the bad side of the police, Judicial System, and of the youth. Should one read it? Probably, if nothing else to see both sides of society, but I do not think it should be a High School read. "Happy" or "positive" stories can and often times are two different things. A happy story is something like a comedy, or even a romance in which bad things happen in the story, but they are quickly resolved in a way that either pleases you or makes you laugh.
A positive story, which this book is not, will always leave the reader feel good about reading the book, or teach him/her something. For example, the Lord of the Rings. At the end the reader has not only read about courage, honor, duty, and respect but also that of the incredible power of greed.
I believe this book is a little bit on the negative side to, because all it talks about is a murder trial and the killers and someone who might have been involved and might not have been. A positive story talks about other stuff like sports and non-violent things. I think that it is important to read a variety of stories. It helps sharpen the creativity in the human mind. We can learn from difficult stories that not everything is easy or going to be happy in life and books can help teach people how to deal with certain tough situations during our lifetimes.
This book is negative because the fact hat there is violence and sexual abuse in the story. I would bet that this is on the banned book list and some of us voted because we like to be the opposition in stuff.
Joe R.
I do agree *for the most part* that "MONSTER" is a negative story, but without negative points of view, how would people learn lessons without trying things out for themselves/or researching about other events? Once someone takes their chances, you've lost your life in the process (or something close to it) and may have not had any idea that something could've ended up the way it did. What makes a story negative is negative characters, surroundings, and negative thoughts/points made in the story. I dont think there is such a thing as a 'happy' story, even in those books we read as children, there was an evil/bad character trying to make things negative anyway. Now for 'positive', I just believe that would have to depend on the kind of character you have and/or your moral values/views. I believe I've made my point in weither its important to only read a 'happy' story because there is almost no such thing as a 'happy' story(other than romances) =) . With this said I hope all of your thoughts may be expanded for the future!
I think this book is a negative one because it has a lot of violence in it, but then again most books that include court cases tend to have violence in them. The difference between negative and positive ideas for books I think depend on the total amount of violence and conflict between characters in the story.
-Andrew W.
Bobby R.
i think that this is a negative story because its the kind of stuff that happens all the time especially since we live in canton. this book is also negative because it shows how messed up our court system can be.
I could see this book showing people that if you commit a felony you are pretty much screwed for life but other than that I really don't think that you would get much from reading this book.
Dave W.
this book isn't hard to read or have difficult plots and characters its just i don't want to read about some criminal who made an unwise decision to hang out with a gang and not have the common sense to know that he would eventually be a part of a crime
no matter if he was a look out or not he was still an accomplance to the crime mainly the lookout man so he was part of what went on while he may think he innocent he's actualy GUILTY.
I think this book is negative because there is a lot of violence and i think that he was guilty so he should have been put in jail.
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