Stone Cold Shelter

650 Words2 Pages

Shelter is the main antagonist in the book Stone Cold by Robert Swindells, he is a middle aged man who used to be a soldier but got discharged due to his mental health. He says “If I can't turn garbage into men any more, then I can clean up the garbage, can’t I?”. So he starts killing the homeless people of London and hiding the bodies under the floorboards of his house. He focuses on killing the protagonist, Link, and his friend Ginger because they were laughing at him and he felt insulted. In this essay I will talk about his history, his murders and his mental health. This book does not tell us a lot about Shelters history or even what his real name is but the book does say that he is 47 and was a Sergeant-Major working for the National Service where he would, in his own words, “Turn dirty, scruffy, pimply youths into soldiers. Into men.” When they stopped the National Service he was fired on medical grounds, though he says this is just an excuse and he is “Fit as a butcher’s dog.” Later on in the book it becomes clear that by “medical grounds” they are referring to his mental health not to his physical health. Shelters unique and mysterious …show more content…

One of Shelters sayings is “The secret to victory in any campaign is planning and preparation”. Shelter only targets homeless people who are alone, most of the time he pretends works at a homeless person shelter and tells the kids that they can get food and a bed if they follow him but instead he takes the victims to his home and kills them. He plans everything down to the last detail, for example he makes sure to buy a house that has a basement where he can store the bodies without them rotting. He even buys thick curtains and low energy light bulbs so his neighbors can’t see any light coming through the windows. As you can see he does not leave anything to chance and despite his poor mental health he is still very

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