Social Action Critical Thing Question #3: Nineteen Minutes

Question #3: How does the text make you think about justice in the world?
     I am reading Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult, and it is a very wonderful book. The book contains many issues, and it really makes you think about the world in a different way. In Nineteen Minutes, Peter Houghton opens fire at his high school, Sterling High. This book goes deeper as you read along, than just being about a school shooting. It tells about the events before and after the shooting, and what causes Peter to be angered, and the effect, which is the school shooting. Throughout the book, before, after, and during the school shooting, it really made me think about justice in the world.
     To start off, justice is not served in the text. Even when Peter was a little boy, he used to always be picked on and bullied. He would never feel comfortable at school. Even after the shooting, people were hurt for no reason, like Haley Weaver, the senior who was homecoming queen for two years in a row. For justice to be served in the book, people would have to be treated equal, and people would have to get punishment fairly, for what they have done. Like for example, when Peter went to his first day of kindergarten, he was given a Superman lunch box from his mother. Peter really liked it, and it was special to him. Once he got onto the bus, a boy with ape arms and a backward baseball cap grabbed the lunch box and threw it out of a window. Peter was shocked by it, and it basically shaped his school life for the rest of his life. He was an outcast for the rest of his school life. Josie was basically the only one there who stuck up for him, but she drifted apart from him. She wasn't really close to him around the time of the school shooting. This showed me how people are not treated with justice.
     In this book, the person who represents justice is Josie. Josie is always sticking up for Peter, like when she beat up Drew because he would always pick on Peter and hurt him. She did what she thought was right, wanting the bullying to be turned the other way around. Josie's motivation is to do what is right. She believes that what is happening to Peter is not right, that is why she offered to share her peanut butter sandwich with Peter after his lunch box got thrown out the window. This makes me think about how you should do what you feel is right and you should never be scared to stand up for yourself, or for someone else in Josie's case, if you believe what you are doing is right. Josie as a little girl is actually more intelligent than she seems.
     Also, this text makes me think about justice in the world by showing the reader, what comes around goes around. When we were trying to define justice in a class discussion, one definition was, what comes around goes around, and that makes sense. After all, the definition of justice is righteousness, or fairness. Bullying  blocks justice, and it really affects people and justice. If you bully or treat someone unfairly, it can come right back at you, either in a form of a beating, like Josie did for Peter, or the devastating form of a school shooting.
      This text also made me think about how situations are handled in the real world. The setting in this book is very much like the setting in the real world, so what happens in the text either happened or could happen in the real world. When Lacy, Peter's mother, went to talk to a teacher after Peter was bullied, the teacher was telling Lacy that Peter should learn how to stand up for himself. "If someone cuts him in the lunch line, or if he's teased, he should say something in return instead of just accepting it." The teacher said to Lacy. These situations are handled by telling the victim to come back at the person bullying them. This could be a good thing, for Peter to stand up for himself and for him to come back at the bullying. This could be good for the time, but later on in life, when he really is angry at the person bullying him, he would do something extremely bad, like open fire at his school.
     In conclusion, Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult, is a very deep book that makes you think about the world around you. Nineteen Minutes is also a wonderful book because it shows cause and effect. It shows the bad things that happened to Peter as a younger boy, and it shows the effect, opening fire at Sterling High. I really hope that other people in the world get better justice than what Peter got.