Mrs. Palmer
Contemporary Literature
10/27/16
Nineteen Minutes 1/6 The first book I read in contemporary literature was a book called Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Bullying and being bullied is the main theme of the book. The main character Peter Houghton was bullied from his early childhood through his adolescence and one day he had enough. He brought guns into Sterling High, the high school which he attended, and killed 10 people and wounded nineteen. His lawyer tries to prove his innocence by showing how often and harshly he was bullied and the traumatic stress caused by it. First, I will discuss whether parents should be teach their kids to fight back against bullies. I do not believe that parents should teach their children to fight back against bullies. In the book Lacy Houghton tries to do this with Peter by banning him from seeing Josie …show more content…
They should know the difference between joking around and major bullying however and not overreact to small things. Major bullying should be rooted out though with major punishments to help stop the rash of school shootings led to by students being bullied. This will be a hard balance to maintain but I believe it can be done. Lastly, I do think bullies need to take responsibilities for their actions. They realize what they are doing is wrong and should be punished for it if they are caught. In the book Drew tried to lie to the lawyers when asked if he bullied Peter and got upset when he had to tell the whole town the things he did to him in court. He did not want to take responsibility for his actions. In conclusion, I found Nineteen Minutes to be a very good book to read. It had an interesting plot and made me think about our own high school. I would recommend this book to other people who enjoy reading. It did a very good job of showing both sides of bullying. It also showed the value of family during a