In her book, The Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town, Mitra Ojito describes in detail the story of the murder of Marcelo Lucero, who was murdered after being cornered by a group of teenage boys in a small town in New York. Starting with the title itself and continuing throughout the entire book, Ojito employs comparison and contrast to establish characters, set the tone, and present every side of this terrible situation. Though the situation perhaps begs for a scapegoat, for a villain, someone to place blame on and dismiss in order to avoid digging deeper, Ojito refuses this option and instead commits, mainly through the use of juxtaposition, to a truthful examining of the years of hatred, misconceptions, and opposing
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The most impactful way she does this is by comparing past immigrants of the town with the current ones. She writes, “In fact, there are numerous similarities between the Italian immigrants who settled in Patchogue in the late nineteenth century and the Ecuadorians who started arriving after Julio Espinoza moved to the village in 1984” (59). Ojito goes on to develop the fact that some people disregarded or ignored these similarities while others embraced them, creating two distinct groups of characters to compare. One of these in the similarities group was the mayor of Patchogue, a descendant of Italians immigrants himself. “In fact, Ecuadorians, he thought, did not look that different from his grandfather Romeo and the men who had helped build his town” (65). This juxtaposition serves to reveal two differing viewpoints and perhaps hint at the hypocrisy that fueled this …show more content…
She writes that though he committed this heinous act, friends described murderers as “‘sweet,’ ‘fun’ and ‘great’” (83). She also allows that “It is clear that, for the briefest time, in the heat of their fierce and uneven encounter, Jeff had felt something akin to admiration for a man he knew only as a ‘beaner’” (132). She parallels almost all descriptions of Jeff, including that by his girlfriend, whom she paraphrased as saying that “At her eighteenth birthday party, in her house, he got so drunk that she had to help carry him to a car that would take him home. But he could also be a sweet young man, who dreamed of having three children with her, and who was very close to his family” (87), and by his dad: “Conroy said his son was a ‘sweet loving kid, who never tolerated bullies’ and has a 10:00 p.m. curfew most weekends. Neighbors say that he was the kind of young man who offered to mow the lawn for them and smacked their children if they cursed in front of their parents. But others who knew him primarily as a student say Jeff was ‘obnoxious’ and has absorbed his father’s displeasure toward his Latino neighbors” (89). Even as she writes of the trial, Ojito says that “despite the black suit he wore to court most days and the fact that his hands were cuffed as he entered and left the court, Jeff still looked like a sullen but scared teenager who appeared to
The most impactful way she does this is by comparing past immigrants of the town with the current ones. She writes, “In fact, there are numerous similarities between the Italian immigrants who settled in Patchogue in the late nineteenth century and the Ecuadorians who started arriving after Julio Espinoza moved to the village in 1984” (59). Ojito goes on to develop the fact that some people disregarded or ignored these similarities while others embraced them, creating two distinct groups of characters to compare. One of these in the similarities group was the mayor of Patchogue, a descendant of Italians immigrants himself. “In fact, Ecuadorians, he thought, did not look that different from his grandfather Romeo and the men who had helped build his town” (65). This juxtaposition serves to reveal two differing viewpoints and perhaps hint at the hypocrisy that fueled this …show more content…
She writes that though he committed this heinous act, friends described murderers as “‘sweet,’ ‘fun’ and ‘great’” (83). She also allows that “It is clear that, for the briefest time, in the heat of their fierce and uneven encounter, Jeff had felt something akin to admiration for a man he knew only as a ‘beaner’” (132). She parallels almost all descriptions of Jeff, including that by his girlfriend, whom she paraphrased as saying that “At her eighteenth birthday party, in her house, he got so drunk that she had to help carry him to a car that would take him home. But he could also be a sweet young man, who dreamed of having three children with her, and who was very close to his family” (87), and by his dad: “Conroy said his son was a ‘sweet loving kid, who never tolerated bullies’ and has a 10:00 p.m. curfew most weekends. Neighbors say that he was the kind of young man who offered to mow the lawn for them and smacked their children if they cursed in front of their parents. But others who knew him primarily as a student say Jeff was ‘obnoxious’ and has absorbed his father’s displeasure toward his Latino neighbors” (89). Even as she writes of the trial, Ojito says that “despite the black suit he wore to court most days and the fact that his hands were cuffed as he entered and left the court, Jeff still looked like a sullen but scared teenager who appeared to