American Rust Theme Essay

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The novel American Rust by Philipp Meyer is a very interesting story of two college aged boys, Isaac and Billy Poe. There is a constant theme surrounding the two boys, which is the idea of darkness and negativity. This idea is very prominent throughout the novel as the imagery in the novel is described as being dark or being black and lacking any kind of lighting. It would seem that the darkness follows specifically Isaac and Poe, but it is also present within other characters as well. Anger, uncertainty or fright, and violence could all be considerably related to the idea of darkness, and these traits are very prevalent within the novel and contribute to the overall meaning that darkness surrounds everyone, in some form and that it is up to …show more content…

While Poe is in prison after being detained for being assumed to have murdered the Swede, he is frustrated with the choices he has decide between. “He put his head under the bunk and lay there with his face in darkness,” (pg. 290). Typically, when someone, most times a child is frustrated, they will shove their face into the pillow, which is why Meyer could be indicating that Poe is facing some kind of frustration with his current situation. He continues to go on to contemplate telling the truth, even though what he sees as the truth, is not actually the truth. He believes that Lee would never look at him in quite the same way as she normally would. After the Swede was killed by Isaac, both Isaac and Poe were running through to get back home. It was so dark that they could not see the railroad tracks they ran on. Poe began contemplating the choice to call 911 for the guy that got hit, but Isaac seemed to get frustrated as he knew that right after an ambulance would be sent that way, the police would follow soon after. Isaac knows exactly how the justice system tends to work, and he did not believe that the system would end up favoring their side of the story, even though it was self-defense. Isaac made Poe agree not to tell a single person about what happened and about what they

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