Locked Up in Myself, Never Gonna Get Free

The protagonist of Monster is Steve Harmon, a teenager on trial for murder. He is accused of being the lookout for a corner store robbery which ended in the death of the store owner. Steve is not accused of being the person who pulled the trigger, just the guy who signaled to the others that it was safe to enter the store, but he is still charged with murder. The story is framed as a screenplay he’s writing about his own life and his trial, with flashbacks to his life before his arrest thrown in.

This book was thought-provoking, but I can’t say I liked it. I appreciated the unusual screenplay format, although I found it a bit distracting (I don’t usually like to read plays). I had some trouble keeping the various lawyers straight during the court case, but it wasn’t too bad. I think the thing I mostly struggled with was that there wasn’t anyone in this book that I really liked. Steve’s lawyer is cold and unfriendly (she is a public defender, and it’s pretty clear that she thinks he’s guilty), and really there’s no one else in the book with many personality traits. Even Steve–I know he’s a teenager, he likes making movies, he’s scared of going to prison, he has parents and a brother–that’s really all I can tell you about him. I suppose, though, that when you’re in a situation where you’re on trial for felony murder, fear probably would crowd out quite a few other parts of your personality. I sympathized with Steve, and I didn’t want him to go to prison, but I don’t really know who he was.

The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if that’s the point. The book is not really about the crime or the trial when you get down to it, but about how other people see Steve and how he sees himself. Has being accused of murder changed the way he feels about himself and his self-worth? Has it changed the way his parents look at him? Does his public defender think he’s guilty because of evidence, or simply because of her impressions of him (he’s black, he’s a teenager, and he seems to have some rough friends)? I’m glad I read it, for that reason alone. How do we look at people who are accused of a crime? How do we decide whether we think they are guilty or innocent? Monster doesn’t answer any of these questions, but I think it asks its readers to engage in some reflection about the assumptions we make about others.