Don't let the bad Things Grow: Book Response and Analysis of "Shine"

          Shine, by Lauren Myracle, tells the story of a 16 year old girl named Catherine, or Cat for short, and her quest to find the person who beat up her ex friend and left him for dead. Patrick, her ex best friend, was found tied to a gas station pump, with the nozzle shoved down his throat, still spewing gas. After a horrible attack on Cat left her alone, confused and depressed, she shut herself out from the world, and most importantly, she shut herself out from her best friend, Patrick. Throughout the story, Cat learns more about the peoples lives around her, and how just like her, they held in their bad thoughts and experiences, and shut the outside world out. The message Lauren Myracle is trying to convey in this novel is that letting horriffic thoughts and events fester or grow inside your mind will only make your life worse. Coming out or confiding in someone about the bad things is the best way to keep your sanity.
        Robert. Gwennie. Beef. Cat. These characters in the story have all held in their horrible events. The result for all four of these children is either death, or pain to themselves. Gwennie spent her entire life being bullied about her weight, and physically abused about it at home by her father. After years of holding in all the feelings and hatred she had, she finally cracked, and took it out on herself. Her decision: to abuse laxitives, starve herself, make herself vomit after eating, and cut herself when she thought about cake. Robert has had a rough life as well. While still in the womb, Robert's mom had a severe alcohol and heroine addiction, which resulted in Roberts physical and mental deformities. At only 11 years old, Robert has had to deal with years of family neglect. Because he hasnt told anyone, he often seeks the comfort of friendship in the teenage crack stompers who live down the street from him. The end result: an eleven year old boy who now has a cocaine addiction. Beef has has to live his entire life in the closet because his town is homophobic. When the pain became unbearable, he turned to meth. Meth can make a person feel like they can do anything, and Beef's idenity limited what he felt like he could do in life. He ended up on a meth rage, beating up Patrick, and then a month later, another meth rage, and he fell off suicide rock to his death. The main character in this mystery novel, Cat, was molested during the summer of her eighth grade year. After, she shut the world out. She shut out her friend Patrick when he needed her the most. When she heard about Patricks attack, she finally decided she had to come out of her dark hole and tell the world what happened to her to better help Patricks court case. After, she felt alot better about herself, and even found closure in the whole incident.
          In conclusion, you never want to bottle up your feelings or traumatizing situations. The best way to keep your sanity, or to find closure in a horrific event is to talk about it with a trusted, accepting friend. If you don't, then the end results could be an undesired rage of sorts, or in these cases, even deadly