Billy is portrayed as someone who has given up on everything as he knows he wont get a second chance, and that he’s future is going down the same road as his older brother Jud. Billy has been made to look after himself for most of his life as he’s dad has left him and his mum is too busy worrying about herself. He’s had to learn to find ways to find food and that is stealing from anyone, anywhere. For example he takes a bottle of milk from the milkman, he steals sweets from the little store where he has a job to deliver newspapers. The shop owner doesn’t have any respect or consideration for Billy, which makes you fell sympathetic towards Billy as we get the impression he is judged by his standard of living and not by his personality.
This is a very big problem the world faces today as many people are judged by their wealth instead of who they really are. As there could be a very different person on the inside to what is shown on the outside. In the book after Billy meets with the milkman he takes a walk to a field overlooking a factory, which again is a reference to the working class background, that he lives in.
Many people influence Billy’s life from his family to his friends and to his teachers at school. His older brother bosses him about and they have no respect for each other. He expects Billy to be his personal slave and beats him up when he feels like it. For example when Billy doesn’t buy a betting ticket he goes round to his school and embarrasses him in front of all his school friends. His mum is to caught up in her boyfriends and her own life to take a minute and look at how her own sons are doing. This shows how people can influence you to do things and how important it is to have a stable family and how much it can affect you emotionally and mentally. People have the power to make you feel small, pathetic, useless and unwanted.
Billy has totally given up on school, as there is no hope for him. In one lesson however Mr. Farthing one of Billy’s teachers starts talking about fact and fiction. He then asks Billy for a fact about himself. At first Billy claims “ I don’t know sir”. This shows Billy lacks in confidence in school because he tries and takes the easy way out. Mr. Farthing eventually gets him talking by asking lots of questions. Billy answers to the questions gradually get longer. This shows that if Billy is paid a bit of attention and given a chance he can be quite interesting and confident.
Mr. Farthing even takes the time to come and visit Billy and sees the bird do a few tricks. This really shows how one person doing small things can really help someone. Not all the teachers are like Mr. Farthing the p.e teacher takes and thrashes all of Billy’s confidence. He makes him go into goal and is biased towards the other team by not allowing goal from them etc.
Barry Hines uses spelling and punctuation mistakes, as well as slang phrases to show the limits of Billy’s education. It’s a moving piece of writing because it shows us just how little Billy has in his life. He uses a lot of description that creates a very realistic atmosphere. He uses a different way of describing things instead of saying “Billy was nervous” he say’s “ Billy’s hand were sweating”. I think this works very well as he likes to describe the smallest things like when he sets the scene for the classroom. This is also a good example for his punctuation as he uses short sentences, “the scuffle of a turning page” etc. the problem with using so much description is that it leaves the readers having no imagination on the scene or character. Most of the book is written as Billy’s thoughts on things and he doesn’t use speech that much to describe things.
This book reflects on many issues that still carry on today but have got even more serious. It shows how lucky we are to have a family who care and love us and how important it is not to take it for granted, as there are many children who don’t know the feeling of being loved. I think Barry Hines used a very good story to bring the message across on how people can be made to feel. And that everyone deserves a second chance and should not be judged on wealth but on the persons morals and personality,
