Chapter Nineteen & Twenty

In these two chapters, we read something about two new developments in the case of Matt.

The first big development is that now almost the whole school knows that the Brewer twins had pressed charges against Matt. They are the ones who have destroyed Matt’s life and the lives of his family.
The author writes about this development by using a kind of stream-of-consciousness-technique. It’s also a kind of dialogue. There are many statements, one after another. They aren’t all referenced to the previous one. It’s a conversation between some students. They are all very excited. This is why it looks like a stream of consciousness. They are all advancing their opinion, so it’s very confused.

The second development is that the family Donaghy sues the school, its district and its principal and also the Brewers. They want to get millions of dollars, something from twenty to hundred million dollars. They demand that high prize because of “’defamation of character’, ‘mental cruelty’ and ‘mental distress’ (p. 132, ll. 2-4)”.

While reading the part of the text about the second development (p. 131-132, ll. 26-17), we can clearly detect the opinion of the author Joyce Carol Oates. She accuses the behavior of many people to gossip with someone about a critical topic like the case of Matt, without knowing any facts. They only tell something so it causes many false rumors.

She shows that at an extreme example. First they talk about twenty million then about hundred million dollars. So no one knows the truth and that’s the only important thing.