This post is a response to "Am I Blue?", by Bruce Coville. When I first finished reading this passage, I couldn't figure out what really caught me about it. There was something that felt very mesmerizing and heartfelt about this story to me. After thinking about it for a while I came to realize that it was the way the message was shown. I've never read a story where the message stood out so clearly. The way it was written, the plot itself almost seemed a little bit sloppy. It had an almost humorous story line to it, with a fairy godfather, and a day where anyone who is the least bit gay turns blue. The characters weren't even very intricate. Why I believe the author did this, was so that the story would not distract the reader from the message.
The message of the story was basically, lots of people are gay all over the world, and no one has the right to demean someone for being different from them. The author obviously thought this message was vital to get across, as they made no attempt to mask it within the story. He gave us a main character, Vince, who was easy to relate to, and a problem that people face all of the time. Even if you have not faced this particular issue, that by no means says that you don't know what it feels like to be singled out.
He added on to the empathy that he meant for the reader to feel by adding on some very strong examples. Melvin was a living (sort of ) reminder of the terrible things that can happen when people are homophobic. Because he was openly gay, he was killed. Then there was Vince who gets beat up because someone thinks that he was interested in "jumping his bones". These instances are there to horrify the reader into seeing the injustice of our whole situation.
Another thing the author highlights in this passage is hypocrisy. Coville ends up showing that the guy who beat up Vince at the beginning ends up turning blue himself when Melvin makes it blue day. He also adds on to this by showing that a very homophobic republican that Vince sees on TV is also gay.
In the end, this was a message shown via story that was very thinly veiled and was written solely to give readers a new perspective.
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