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Saturday, July 11th
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 eats breakfast on Sunday morning and then attends the church service until a bad fight breaks out and the minister calls the guards. The guards put all the inmates on lock-down until visitations start in the afternoon, and in Steve’s cell two more guys nearly wind up in a fight over nothing. Steve realizes that these guys fight so much to defend their reputation because in jail, it’s all they have. After lockdown ends, Steve and other inmates sit in the recreation area. Someone watches a baseball game on the TV, but it looks to Steve like people from another world. Everything from his old life seems another world—his teachers, his friends, everything.
Steve’s reflection that inmates fight to uphold their own reputation, which is their only possession, again suggests that jail and prison do not rehabilitate men from their former violence but instead make them more violent within such a confined and tense space. Additionally, Steve’s feeling that the world is unreal suggests that he is further disassociating from his own self, not experiencing life as Steve Harmon, but as a passive observer trapped in an unjust system.
Themes
Through the window, Steve can see Jerry and his parents crossing the street. Jerry looks tiny amidst the world. Steve waves to him, even though he knows Jerry can’t see him. He wishes he could tell him that he loves him and that he’s struggling in jail. Steve’s parents visit one at a time and act cheerful for him, though Steve senses that Mrs. Harmon is “mourning me as if I were dead.” After they leave, there is too much time left in the day. Steve looks over his movie and wishes that this life were only a movie. O’Brien told him that Monday is important, the day that the prosecution will use its key witnesses.
Steve’s recognition that Jerry looks tiny compared to the wide world around him parallels his reflection that King looks foolish and powerless against the weight of the justice system, both of which suggest that Steve’s time in jail is forcibly changing and widening his perspective beyond the small confines of his neighborhood. While this is beneficial in some ways, it also seems to increase Steve’s sense of powerlessness.
Themes
