I am astounded with the comprehensive narration of history of murder in the United States from Prof. Abate’s introduction, especially to the facts that Murder has become so engrained in many aspects of Americans’ lives : from television to video games, from movie cinemas to murder trials, from novels to children’s literatures. The introduction part of the study portrays a long trace of history on how this nation has been exposed to human - taking - other humans’ lives - culture.
I have also understood how American society have taken murder and the gruesome killings of other human beings as something that have become part of their daily lives and to certain extent, a thing to enjoy. The description on people’s interest on public hanging ( p. 19) and the trial of …show more content…
Especially on the parts that one ‘tribe’ was hunting and killing its members– in any means I would never thought a kid would do. This is when, according to Stallcup, “young characters meet violent punishments and even death because they transgress social boundaries and challenge adult authority” (125, quoted in Abate, p.8). In the story, the boys characters in the story challenge the rules they knew were made by adults, without the existence of adults, resulting in a ghastly hunting and killing spree committed by young boys to other boys in the spirit of enforcing their own rules.
The story of Lord of the flies, which was written for young readers, is another evidence, among so many put forward by Abate, to show that the violence, crimes and the acts of killing are common themes used in children’s literature. I found that it is a quote by David Ray Papke, who characterizes the nation’s literature production as ‘‘crime-related cultural production’’ (xiv, quoted in Abate,