Year 10 English
Text response:
CHAPTER SUMMARIES
PROLOGUE
• The novel begins with a crime scene-: Craggs and the narrator steal a complete Sidchrome set and some other tools
• The narrator loves the set because it has everything he needs and he ends up keeping it.
• He hides it in his dad’s shed, although he never uses it, he occasionally opens and looks at it. He hopes that one day he will use it to change an engine.
• Craggs sells the other stuff and gives the narrator ‘hundred bucks’.
CHAPTER 1
• The narrator’s father refuses to watch his son throw his life away. With the help of the local sergeant – Sergeant McPhee- the dad organises for the narrator to spend 3 months in isolation in a shack in the middle of nowhere.
• The narrator must follow an action plan.
• The 3 months in the bush is in lieu of one month in the ‘slammer’ where his friend Craggs has already started his time.
• There is a unit of people co-ordinating the narrator’s isolation.
• The dad and other people believe that this time away from bad influences will give the narrator time to think about his behaviour and hopefully change his ways.
• We learn that unlike the narrator’s father, Craggs’ dad did not help him; he simply agreed to the one month jail term in an adult jail
CHAPTER 2
• The only facilities the shack has is a fridge and a shower.
• The shack is 17 kilometres away from the nearest town
• The narrator describes how he met his girlfriend, Bella. There was an instant attraction.
CHAPTER 3
• Joel, the narrator arrives at the shack. His dad leaves immediately.
• Joel and his father appear to have a good relationship – in fact his father rarely lost his temper. However, his dad was unnerved by his son’s latest crime.
• When his father asks Joel why he committed the crime he found he couldn’t answer him. Some of possible answers that go through his head included: boredom, peer pressure; anger at the way people made fun of the way he spoke.
• His father leaves him money and implores him to only buy essential.
• His dad also insists that Joel writes to him every day.
CHAPTER 4
• Focuses on his relationship with Bella- how they are instantly connected to each other.
