In the book Trash,
Andy Mulligan uses many techniques to create suspense. One technique he uses is to make the reader follow a
trail of clues. An example of this is when Raphael and
Gardo found a bag, they don't know what is inside the bag but after they open
the bag they found a lot of things inside it such as ID card, two photos of a
girl,a wallet and a key. Another example
of this is when they found an ID card. Both of them don't know who's ID card it
is. After they research about the guy in the ID card they know who he is. Other
example is when they saw a key inside the bag. After they asked Rat what is the
key for, Rat said that the key is a locker key and Rat also said that the
locker is in the Central Station. After they went to the station they found a
letter which had code in it. But we
still wondering what the code is for.
Furthermore, in
Trash, we don’t always know if a character is good or bad. Examples
of this include the police. In the book some of the dumpsite peoples to not
trust the police because the police always lied. Another bad thing about the
police is the police killed the freedom fighter which is Pascal Aguila, they
also tortured Raphael just to know where the
bag is. Another character that we don’t know if he is a bad or a good character
is Rat also known as Jun-Jun. In the book is says that Rat lied to Raphael and
Gardo that he has no money at all. But then he told them that he has a box full
of it. Then when he tried to get more money he stole money from the Mission
School safe. Another character that we don’t know if he is a good character or
not is Zapanta or known as the Senator. In the book it says that Zapanta has
stole 30 million dollars from the International AID. He stole the money because
he wanted to be the best man in the city. The last character that we don’t know
if he’s a good man or not is Jose Angelico. In the book is says that Jose
Angelico stole 6 million dollar from The Vice President by using a fridge. Some
people thought that he was a bad man but he actually a good man because he
stole the money that The Vice President stole from the International AID. He
stole the money because of the people inside Behala not for himself.
In
addition, Mulligan also creates suspense by having the characters work against
a deadline. If the boys don’t discover
the mystery then they are in big trouble because the police are chasing them to
get the bag.
Another
way that suspense is created is by creating conflict between characters. Examples of characters in conflict include Rapheal
and his auntie. They had conflict about giving the bag to the police or not.
His auntie wanted to tell the police that Rapheal had found a bag that the
police was trying to find because she wanted money to live but Raphael said
that he doesn’t want to give the bag to the police because he knows that the police
was lying about giving money to every
family in the dumpsite.
Moreover Mulligan also has
different characters telling the story.
He does this because he wanted to
show different perspective of the characters so we know how each character in
the book feel.
Wow, great blog Amierul. You have covered all of the important points. Make sure you always do an analysis of the evidence you are giving to prove your point, don't just list things like you have done in the first part about following a trail of clues. Your section on whether a character is good or bad is very strong as you tell us about the characters and then discuss/analyse what we know about them to begin with and then what is revealed as time moves on. Well done.
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