The genre of the text is a monologue as it is about the boy writing about his conscious mind. The opening sentence must be attractive so the reader wants to continue. “I don’t have a life.” The readers may ask questions to themselves like why? What has he done wrong? This makes them want to read on. I think that anybody thirteen years or older that can stand a very unfair and sad book would like to read this book. It made me feel like I should do something to help stop child abuse.
I have tried to create an atmosphere where the reader feels sorry for the boy in the monologue. Everything seems to be the boy’s fault and everything is going wrong for him in my work. I expect the reader to feel insecure and aware of the consequences of abuse. Also to feel as if they were the person who was in the position of the child who was getting abused.
The language I have used is not formal or informal, it is in the middle. I haven’t really used slangy words as I feel that the reader may not take the piece seriously.
“No one likes me. Everyone hates me.” These are two very short sentences I used in my work. They are very effective as they are opposites ‘likes’ and ‘hates’, and ‘no one’ and ‘everyone’. Short sentences are good for short pieces. They let the reader think more.
At the end of the monologue, I have repeated the word pray: “Every evening I pray that the next day will be a good one. I pray that my mum will be nice to me. Sometimes I pray that I was in a different family. It hasn’t happened yet. Not once. I need to keep praying.” I have emphasized on the word ‘pray’ because I feel that the boy feels that it is his only hope of survival.
“Drugs. Cocaine.” These one-word sentences are to the point. Cocaine is a type of drug. After this it says “Tried others but cocaine feels good.” ‘Tried’ is a verb without a subject, i.e. ‘I’. This makes the text partly informal.
The use of rhetorical questions make the reader ask themselves the same questions (as if they are in the situation of the person who is actually in the monologue), such as “But if I was never born then mum wouldn’t have anyone to pick on would she?”, and “What do I want to do when I’m older?” Rhetorical questions help guide the readers search for answers and sometimes imply answers on their own.
The paragraph in the monologue about bullying is very important. Many parents don’t know that their children are being bullied at school. But this situation is different as it is obvious that this child would get bullied. “They all bully me at school. For not having friends. For having raggy clothes. Basically for everything.” The child probably feels that all the pressure is on him. He doesn’t have a life. At school classmates are bullying him and at home his mother is bullying him.
My style model, taken from ‘A Child Called ‘It’’ is a serious section from the book. It is where his mother stabs the child in his stomach with a kitchen knife. It shows what sort of bullying the child gets from his mother. And how his brother is getting involved with it too. His mother is the boss “You have 20 minutes! One minute, one second more, and you go hungry again! Is that understood?”, and if he doesn’t listen to her he gets punished.
My monologue is similar as the boy feels that he is getting punished for his life. “My mum keeps telling me to wash the dishes or clean the floor and if I don’t do it properly I know what will happen.”
I took advice from people in my intended audience who read my monologue. I changed some of the text by adding more detail to it. An example of this is where it says “Besides, I don’t want anyone to know what goes on in our house whether it is good or bad.” I then added after it had been trialled: “It was a secret between my mum and me. No one else was to know.
The attitudes and values of the text is to show what the consequences of abusing is and how it could turn someone’s life around forever, even if it was stopped.
