In the story "Am I Blue?" by Bruce Caville, sixteen year old Vincent is still very uncertain of his sexual orientation. Vince is called a "fruit" by another teenage boy who seems to often pick on Vince, named Butch Carrigan. Butch pushes Vince into a puddle to "teach Vince to look at him". As Vince lies in the puddle a flamboyant man named Melvin appears beside him who Vince later is convinced is his fairy godfather after making mud disappear from his pants and turning Vince's coffee into a Swiss double mocha. Melvin tells Vince about his experiences with his sexuality and being "gaybashed". Being a fairy godfather and all, Melvin grants Vince a wish. His wish is that for one day everyone who is at all homosexual will turn blue for everyone to see. This is to show how many there are that we would never expect and how they are constantly surrounding us without us knowing and yet we have still survived. Once Vince's wish is granted, he asks Melvin as his one last wish to turn Butch Carrigan blue, but to Vince's surprise that does not count as a wish, for Butch Carrigan was already blue.
If I was Vince I would probably do the same thing, I mean first of all it would be pretty cool and interesting if everyone could tell all of the people who are gay because of what color they were, it would probably change many people's views on homosexuality and the world. And since Vince has not had good experiences with Butch of course he would want to make him blue so Butch can see how it feels and everyone will know he's a hypocrite.
On the other hand, I bet there is a reason why Butch acts that way, like maybe his dad doesn't like homosexuals and raised him to be against them and to pick on them, so maybe that's why he picks on Vince in the first place, to make his dad proud. So if Vince made Butch blue, and his father found out his father maybe would do something bad to Butch because of his opinions on gay people. So I think that just because Butch picks on Vince (which I strongly disapprove of) doesn't mean that Vince should make it so Butch is blue, because he obviously isn't ready to come out of the closet and no matter what it is Butch's choice and Vince doesn't know why Butch is keeping it bottled up inside and picking on gay kids, so he shouldn't just think Butch is all bad and do something that for all he knows could harm Butch a lot.
I feel like a lot of people often are mostly thinking about themselves and don't realize how complicated each and every person's life actually is. I recently read "Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky [SPOILER ALERT] and in the book the main character Charlie's deceased aunt molested him. But Charlie isn't mad at the his aunt nor does he love her less, because he realizes that someone did that to her as a child and someone did that to whoever did that to her and so on and so on. So you can't really blame Butch, because it's probably just how he was raised and what people learn to do at home and what people learn from their parents who everyone at one point looks up to and wants to do things like, is what people usually end up doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment