Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Monster, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dehumanization and Racism
Lies and Self-Interest
Endemic Violence
Injustice
Summary
Analysis
Steve describes the events as a screenplay, notating the camera angles and transitions. The camera pans over a cell block in the Manhattan Detention Center. Black and Hispanic voices shout obscenities through the bars. 16-year-old Steve sits on his metal cot, head in his hands. He pulls a blanket over his head while a voiceover tells him that he can’t hide from this; “the Detention Center is the real thing.” The title card rolls: “Monster! The Story of My Miserable Life,” with acting and directing credits.
Steve hiding his head under a blanket summons the image of a young child hiding under a blanket from nighttime monsters or the dark, reiterating the fact that, although Steve is in an adult jail and faces an adult charge, in many ways he is still just a child who’s been thrust into chaotic swirl of events. The fact that most of the men in the prison are black and Hispanic suggests that the narrative will explore issues of race.
Themes
The film cuts to the Manhattan Detention Center, where Steve has no appetite for breakfast and one of his fellow inmates remarks that his trial begins today. A prison van drives Steve to the courthouse, where he meets his attorney Kathy O’Brien. O’Brien explains that both Steve and James King are on trial for felony murder, and that the prosecutor Sandra Petrocelli is talented and aggressive. She’s trying to get Steve and King sentenced with the death penalty, so the jury will view life in prison as a merciful sentence. Steve needs to take the trial extremely seriously and communicate to the jury that he takes it seriously. Steve asks O’Brien if she thinks they’ll win the case, but O’Brien answers that it depends on what Steve thinks of as winning.
Although the details of the murder have not been revealed yet, the idea that a prosecutor should aim for the death penalty for a 16-year-old kid seems absurd, suggesting that either Steve’s actions were so heinous and revolting to have merited such antagonism, or more likely, there is a certain level of injustice within the legal system. Petrocelli already does not seem to be angling for a fair punishment, but rather for the maximum punishment she can muster, even if that means killing a 16-year-old child who has not even had the chance to live as an adult yet.
Themes
Steve and King sit handcuffed in the holding room with a guard and the stenographer. King is 23, but looks much older. The stenographer hopes that the case will run for two weeks because she needs the money, but the guard thinks the court will just run the case through the motions and close it out. The guard brings Steve into the courtroom and seats him next to O’Brien. Steve tells her he’s scared, and that he’s writing this all down in his notebook as a movie. The judge enters, a 60-year-old man who already looks bored. King and his attorney Asa Briggs are seated at the other defendant’s table, and Petrocelli is ready to begin. The judge chats with the attorneys about their weekend before ordering that the jury be brought in.
The guard’s assumption that the case will simply be put through the motions and the fact that the judge looks bored from the beginning suggest that many of the people involved in operating the trial are not seeing it as a significant moment in Steve’s life with potentially life or death stakes, but rather handling it like a rote process they’ve all been through before. If the judge simply is handling it as a rote procedure, it seems unlikely that he will do a fair or adequate job.
Themes
The book briefly cuts to a flashback of Steve’s high school film club. Mr. Sawicki, their film teacher, talks about how a film’s ending needs to be unpredictable enough to keep the audience engaged. If they can see where a film is going too early, they’ll make their mind up about what they think of it long before it’s over.
Sawicki’s note about unpredictability is a direct nod to the novel’s own unreliable narrator and the author’s reason for keeping the reader in the dark about both the verdict and Steve’s innocence for as long as possible.
Themes
Get the entire Monster LitChart as a printable PDF.
In the courtroom, the jury enters and Petrocelli makes her opening remarks. She says that they are here to dispense justice—although most people are honest citizens, some people—such as the defendants—are “monsters” who kill and steal. In December of last year, two men entered a Harlem drugstore intending to rob the place, and the state believes they were Richard “Bobo” Evans and James King. The shopkeeper, Alguinaldo Nesbitt, produced his legally-owned handgun, there was a struggle, and Mr. Nesbitt was shot dead. One young man was supposed to wait outside the store, and another, Steve, was supposed to enter the store ahead of time to check for police.
Petrocelli’s labeling of Steve and King as “monsters” immediately dehumanizes them, denying them the right to be seen as human beings by the jury. The jury will not be prone to view such monsters as individual people with their own personality, interests, and loved ones, but simply as bad actors who threaten the well-being of the “proper” human beings, those who are not monsters.
Themes
On his notepad, Steve writes “monster” over and over again, until O’Brien takes the pencil from him and crosses each “monster” out and tells him to believe in himself so the jury can, too. Petrocelli closes her remarks by stating that both King and Steve are implicated in the murder of Mr. Nesbitt. Then O’Brien makes her opening remarks, stating that the law protects young men like Steve until they are proven guilty, and she will argue that Petrocelli’s argument is deeply flawed and does not implicate Steve in any crime at all. Briggs makes his opening remarks, arguing that the witnesses Petrocelli will build her case on are deeply flawed and self-serving.
Steve’s obsession with the word “monster” suggests that he has immediately internalized Petrocelli’s condemnation of his character, demonstrating the manner in which a dehumanized person may tragically view themselves in that way, as well. However, Steve’s immediate acceptance of himself as the monster also suggests that he is weighed down by guilt and regret, possibly over the death of Mr. Nesbitt
Themes
José Delgado, Mr. Nesbitt’s employee, is the first to take the stand. Under Petrocelli’s questioning, Delgado recounts that he left the store at 4:30 in the afternoon to go buy some dinner before finishing his night shift. When he returned, he found Mr. Nesbitt dead on the floor and five cartons of cigarettes missing. Petrocelli notes that Delgado is a competitive martial artist, well-known in his neighborhood. Briggs challenges Delgado’s medical expertise to so quickly know that Nesbitt was dead, but O’Brien makes no follow-up.
The fact that the murderers entered the store only when Delgado was away suggests that the assailants feared his skill as a fighter and did not bring a weapon of their own, since if they had brought a weapon, the presence of a martial artist would be much less a threat. Briggs’s weak challenge to Delgado’s medical expertise suggests that he does not believe he has a strong case, and so he will nitpick the prosecutor’s evidence to look for weaknesses.
Themes
Salvatore Zinzi takes the stand next. Questioned by Petrocelli—whom Briggs accuses of asking leading questions—Zinzi states that he is an inmate at Riker’s Island, serving a sentence for buying stolen merchandise. Wendell Bolden, another inmate, told Zinzi that he’d bought stolen cigarettes from someone he knew was involved with a robbery. Zinzi then called a detective he knew with the information. When Briggs and O’Brien question Zinzi, he admits that he stole the information from Bolden, who wanted to strike a deal with the district attorney to get an early release. Zinzi used the stolen information to strike his own deal because he was afraid of being gang-raped in prison. Briggs points out that Zinzi’s testimony is flagrantly self-serving and could be a lie.
Zinzi and Bolden, testifying with second- and third-hand information, both have an obvious self-interest, which strongly suggests that they cannot be objective or unbiased witnesses. This demonstrates not only the manner in which the trial swirls with lies, half-truths, and compromised witnesses (making it a poor tool for unveiling the truth of Mr. Nesbitt’s murder), but also suggests that the trial may be based on potentially faulty information, which would lead to an utterly unjust outcome for Steve.
Themes
Steve flashes back to when he was 12 years old. He and his friend Tony are throwing rocks at a lamppost when he misses and strikes a young woman in the distance instead. The woman’s boyfriend comes over to them and demands to know who threw the rock. Steve tells Tony to run, but the man punches Tony, knocking him to the ground. The young woman pulls her boyfriend away, and after they leave Tony angrily says, “I’ll get me an Uzi and blow his brains out.”
Steve’s memory of Tony being beaten up as a young child is framed as an everyday occurrence, suggesting that such senseless and random violence (even towards children) is commonplace in Harlem. Likewise, Tony’s reaction suggests that even young people eventually internalize that violence and desire to use it themselves
Themes
