Unlike many of his peers, he goes to a good school, Stuyvesant High School. Steve’s learned gender roles growing up shape his adolecent behavior, as it causes him to want to fit in with his peers. He wasn’t crying like I thought a man would cry.” (115.) Gender roles are adopted from early childhood, and behaviors are often learned from parents. Harmon begins to cry for his song, in Steve’s journal, “I’ve never seen my father cry before. It also establishes the importance of masculinity, as his father highlights his desire for him to join a football team. The following lines are significant because it paints a picture for the reader of a loving father who wants better things for his son and establishes Steve Harmon as having a good family life who was not raised to be a criminal. It just never came to me that you’d ever be in any kind of trouble. I never though of seeing you- you know- seeing you in a place like this.

I even thought about getting mad at you for staying out too late- there you were lying on the bed in those disposable diapers- I wanted the real diapers but you mother insisted on the kind you didn’t have to wash, just throw away. I never made the football team, but I though- I dreamed you would. I used to think of you going to Morehouse and doing the same things I did when I was there. When you were first born, I would lie up in the bed thinking about scenes of your life. When Steve’s father comes to visit him in prison, he states, He establishes a good relationship with his family, and uses his father to establish how important it is for Steve to be a man.

Myers differentiates Steve’s character from the rest of his peers, to show he has a better character. In this text, Myers shows that gender roles in Harlem in New York City in the 1990’s influence Harmon to want to fit in with his peers. However, it is important to understand that Steve Harmons innocence lies in the notion that his involvement goes no further than trying to fit in with his peers, not because he had malice intentions. Throughout the text, it is unclear to the reader what Harmons true involvement is in the crime in question, a robbery gone awry that results in the death of store owner, Mr. The novel defines being monstrous as a demographic being a young black male from Harlem, something Steve Harmon cannot control. Monster, a novel by Walter Dean Myers told in the perspective of black youth Steve Harmon in the form of a screenplay, tells of Harmon’s predisposed mien of being a monster during his trial for murder, despite the conviction that he is to be viewed as innocent until proven guilty.

Monster steve harmon book