Walter Dean Myer's Monster

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Walter Dean Myer’s book Monster depicts how the American legal system functions. The primary theme of the story is to examine how a person who commits a crime is arrested, convicted, tried, and punished. This book looks at the legal system through the eyes of a young, African American teenager. He paints horrible images of life in jail (but keep in mind… this is a detention center or equivalent to juvenile hall, not the state or federal penitentiary). Further, Myers brings to point that everyone who is sentences to this facility is to be punished, whether they are guilty or innocent. By the end of the story, Steve has a different outlook… things are typically not as bad as you initially think they are… it is all in how you view things.

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