Monster By Walter Dean Myers Analysis

I recently read a book called Monster by Walter Dean Myers, in which a sixteen year-old boy named Steve Harmon was arrested for being accused of shooting a drugstore owner, and watched a documentary titled Murder on a Sunday Morning about a fifteen year-old Brenton Butler being charged with murdering a woman at a motel. I found that the book and the documentary had many similarities and differences. I thought this because both cases are about a young African-American boy who is in custody for something that they did not do. Both police investigations didn't go thoroughly and just rushed through to arrest the boys immediately and are centered around a white defense attorney who tries to convince the jury that the male teen did not committed the crime by giving out evidence.

When the books are written they tend to mirror real life situations. In this case the movie and the book are centered around a male, African-American teen who is accused of committing a crime and how the situation is dealt by going through records to persuade the jury that the boy didn’t commit the murder of a person. For example, both boys were arrested without even questioning as to what’s happening before handcuffing them and sending the two to jail. They are also similar in that they are set in Harlem and Jacksonville respectively, which are notorious for having

a high-level crime rate. Finally, both defense attorneys have to prove to the jury that the boy didn’t commit the crime by going through police records and witness’s testimony.

Although books and documentaries may mirror real life situations and do have similarities they also have to be different in many ways because normally there is one part in the documentary where it is different from the book. In the case of the documentary Brenton Butler is the only defendant in court, whereas in the book you have three defendants who are being accused of the crime; Steve Harmon, James King and Richard “Bobo” Evans. They are also different in that in the book the defense attorney goes through witness’s testimonies, while the documentary the defense attorney go not only through witness’s testimonies, but also into police records. A final difference is that both shootings did not occur at the same place. For instance, in the book the shooting occurred in a drugstore during a robbery, while the documentary the shooting occurred at a motel that was not far away from Brenton’s house.

I preferred the documentary better than the book, because the documentary tells the real events that happened to a fifteen year-old African-American boy who is accused for shooting a woman at a local motel.

The book is great with the plot mainly focused in the courtroom, but it feels like the author put the plot of the story from different events that happened to younger people and not from one whole event. Finally, the document went into depth of how the defense attorney went on to get every piece of evidence as possible to make the eyes of the jury see that Brenton Butler was not the person that shot and killed the

women.