Tenderness: Response

Mathilde Jochum

802

In the novel Tenderness by Robert Cormier, Eric Poole is a serial killer who sexually abuses his victims- after they've been killed. Lorelei Cranston, the secondary character, stumbles upon Eric at the railroad tracks when she is ten years old and gets an obsession to kiss him when she sees him in a newspaper, years later. He has killed approximately five people at that point, with one person after his release from juvenile detention center.The best way to deal with this is to dismiss him as horrible and not force oneself to think about it further. This is the cop out that young adult literature always makes sure to provide for those without a strong stomach. However, this is not a reason why he should be dismissed as evil without being scrutinized further. This is really the lesson and key point of the essay.

Eric is an interesting (if evil) person in many ways. Dismissing his thinking as "just wrong" stops one from contemplating the cause of the situation in the first place. He apparently started killing cats in the neighborhood because he says he found it irresistible not to "push too hard, caress a little bit too hard", and that's where it started. He had been taught to be gentle with animals, but his personality was taking that too far. He started to equate "gentle," "tender," and "animal assault" in his mind. So if one was going to point fingers and call Eric “messed up”, one would be right. However, one would also miss out on the thoughts behind his actions, never really getting to understand what the flaw in him was.

After a while, he becomes more violent, and he really wants to " share tenderness" with someone, not something. The fact that the book is called Tenderness, not Rape, Assault, or The Victim is because of the choice the author made as far as rhetoric goes: he wanted to use the euphemism tenderness for the above words because he wanted to make it clear that the main character really didn't see the other side of the situation. Therefore, he started to kill people. He didn't have the social skills to know how to get someone to have sex with him other than forcing them to or killing them. Thirteen-year-old Lori is trying to find out if he is dangerous to her, and reaches that goal, before she is killed by a drowning nobody committed.  Eric is put into prison again because people think he killed Lori. This is the first time he cries.  

When he was in prison for the first time, though, I don't wonder that he was happy to feel isolated. He didn't want people around because he had never really had a chance to learn many social skills, and since he  can't think about things from other peoples’ perspective to the point where he had never cried before, he probably found it hard to care about anything his inmates had to say to him. He, for instance, didn't make any friends there in the three years he was in prison, never used the same space if it could be avoided, and was not allowed to play team sports. Also, he didn't really understand why it was that he couldn't get anyone to like him, which is probably another reason he felt he needed to kill things before having sex with them, so that he wouldn't have to put up with drastic measures. "He hated drastic measures."

That is why although he did many wrong things, Eric had a very eye opening thought process that shouldn't be dismissed as wrong without having been examined. It could be that the book Tenderness, by Robert Cormier, is banned is because it tells the story from Eric's perspective, along with the narrative of an unsuspecting girl named Lorelei, nicknamed Lori. She seems  to some degree justify his behavior, which is a weird but important experience for me as I have never been put into a position in which I am asked to empathize with the antagonist of a story. Her innocence is very important because she honestly wants to be around him, and when she is drowned after having him try to save her twice, and the main character cries for the first time in his life, that is a really big implication that even while Eric himself has grown so self loathing, he calls himself a monster, “even monsters cry.” The thought behind the book is so deep that Ihave taken a very strong position on whether or not this book should be banned.

I do not agree with this book being banned. I understand the reason for it being banned, but in his case, the thought provoking plot is worth the disturbing subject. The exposure to the book is engaging because it opens the reader's mind. In fact, this lack of shelter is made to make you think about Eric’s thought process and how his environment affected it. It also gives you a painfully innocent perspective on the same things in a different way through Lori. You are forced to empathize with the mass murderer. That in itself is engaging because you only see this seldom. There are many things that are interesting about Eric's thinking. The only thing that is unclear even after scrutiny is this: why is it that Eric still doesn't feel bad about Alicia Hunt, his mother, his stepfather, Betty Ann Tersa, and others, and why he can't see the other side of the situation in which he's placing his victims.

         

Book Log

September
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Luzie und Leander by Belinda Belitz

October
Saeculum by Ursula Poznanski
Rethinking Normal by Katie Rain Hill
Some Assembly Required by Arin Andrews

November
Forest Gate by Peter Akinti
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
December
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
The Walking Dead

Book Response: "Forest Gate" by Peter Akinti

Everyone has had suicidal thoughts at one point or another.

If someone actually has committed suicide, though it is up to the ones the victim loved to find cues as to what led the victim to kill themselves. Forest Gate by Peter Akinti is about a boy who flees from Somalia as a refugee. In London, he encounters many taunts and jeers when he goes to the Forest Gate School for Boys. They bullied him only because they thought he was Pakistani, calling him a “Paki liar,” when he told them he wasn't Pakistani, and was not lying about it. All the people in his class teased him,

Except for one boy.

James, the only friend Ashvin had, as well as Ashvin himself, soon became friends. This shows that some people look at the mainstream people as the antagonists, and come out of it better people.

“My sponsor….bought me expensive jeans, same as everybody wears...and Air Force 1s.”
“Great! Why don’t you put them on?”
”Then they would win.” 

They soon discover that neither of them want to be part of a world where the human race can be so cruel, and become friends over the fact that they are suicidal.
Each of them as only got the other, which might make it more tempting to kill themselves. This is the first clue that they want to kill themselves, at least the first clue that is visible to the outside world.

Also, James’ brothers and mother are completely ignorant to James’ problems, and thus continue to be insensitive to his loneliness.

When Ashvin was beaten by his peers, they did it only for two reasons: They didn’t know anything about him, and were scared of him, and also, they thought he was lesser than them because he was of color, when they knew that he genuinely didn’t care that they despised him.

There is a quote about after the fact when Ashvin sits, huddled in the dark, the rain washing over the bloody gash on the bridge of his nose, that I thought was important because it is truly iconic of the relationship between James and Ashvin.

“... James said he would have cried but he remembered staring directly into Ashvin's eyes looking for tears, but they only glistened in triumph.”

Even while they are raped by two male police officers, they try not to give up. They are trying hard not to give in, but the human race makes it more and more tempting to let death wipe all shame away. Ashvin answers the officers’ questions with a “It’s none of your business”. Jam,es, however, reacts by crying and telling them the entire story while they strangle him.

At some point, Ashvin’s sister states that they “should never have been united in the first place.” I strongly disagree with that idea, because not having a confidant to talk to can make a situation of wanting to give up far worse. I think that given a different reason to have been united may have stopped them from committing suicide. Had they not met each other because a bully threatened to kill Ashvin with a gun to his head, calling him racist things, and beating him until he bled, I think the nature of their relationship would have been a lot more innocent.

All in all, the clues that should be made blatant within this story are numerous. The bullying played a big role. It affected not only Ashvin but also the relationship he has with James. The fact that they were raped by the two racist police officers also probably made giving up more tempting. The question Ashvin’s sister has to answer, now, is how she could have stopped Ashvin from leaving this world.