Chappie and Bone- Two Sides of the Same Coin
Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks tells of the story of a sexually abused teen drug addict named Chappie who becomes mature through a series of ordeals and his figurative rebirth. The story of Chappie is one of a troubled outlaw coming to term with the consequences of his own actions. Throughout the story, as Chappie encounters new people, such as The Adirondack Irons, I-Man, and Doc, his senses of morality, crime and drugs alters from an egocentric philosophy to an altruistic belief.
Chappie is socially insecure and doesn’t know the difference between what is right and what is wrong. Since his mother and stepfather are both alcoholics and neither chooses to form a strong positive emotional attachment to Chappie, the only way for him to get the attention that any kid would crave is to do things so startling that they have no choice but to converse with him, hence the Mohawk haircut and the nose and ear piercing. He exhibits no self control over both drugs and money, evident by his over lavish spending of his mother’s collection of valuable coins on the former until “none of the plastic bags had more than a few coins inside” (11) and is more or less controlled in his actions by Russ, whom he idolizes and depends on for a while after he gets kicked out of his house since “Russ and the biker guys were [his] only friends” (8). He has no sense of consequences and is reckless in his actions, as expressed when he “aimed the rifle at [Willie] and pulled the trigger…the safety was on and the trigger was locked.” (14). He would have shot his cat if not for the safety and indeed did shoot his parents’ bed after he unlocked it. He feels that the difference between right and wrong is that “what was right was what you could get away with and what was wrong was what you couldn’t” (73). He knows intuitively that there is a difference between dealing meth and weed, but he doesn’t know what the difference is. Chappie always takes things for granted and values short term ecstasies over long term plans, typical of a modern teenager.
