Darius Purnell Literary Structure Essay: Havoc

In most murder shows, the episode starts out with either the murder happening or the police/detectives investigating the murder. Only a few times do we have an episode where it starts off with the killing and as far back of what provoked the killer. Killing is still argued as bad but we would at least see the motive and the killer’s view point. In the book before Havoc, which was called Malice, children were being taken away to a comic world brought to life by a character named Tall Jake who becomes the main protagonist. The book focused on the children being killed in the world of Malice and how in the real world the disappearances have became a huge conundrum. The main characters continually blamed Tall Jake for all of it and this influenced the point of view for the reader when beginning to read the second book, Malice. Their point of view was that everything that is happening in both worlds was Tall Jake’s fault and he needs to be stopped. As you continue farther into the second book they slowly ease the thought to the reader that Tall Jake isn’t much of a villain and is doing what he is told. Soon enough the book just eventually flat out have Tall Jake say himself that he is just doing what the children want. They called on him and did the ritual. He is just responding to the call and what they want. Which makes the new point to the reader that the problems you have in life are caused by you, not life itself.

In the book Havoc, the main characters Seth, Justin, and Kady have just finished battling Tall Jake in the world of Malice and returned to the real world . They have just rescued Alicia who is a friend of Seth in the lair of Tall Jake’s henchmen and have reached the room of Grendel who is the creator of the comic. They were about to develop a plan to finish off Tall Jake when he enters the room with his henchmen, Tall Jake catches them by surprise by appearing behind him. Seth then has a conversation with Tall Jake and blamed him for the death of his friend Luke who was taken into Malice. Tall Jake then responds with the following quote. “No. I did not take anyone who did not ask. It was made very clear to all of you: If you perform the ritual. I will take you away. And yet so many of you asked me anyway. You just had to risk it, didn’t you? .... I am not asking for your pardon. But I did not kill them. I tested them, as they asked. Some failed. Some like yourselves did not.” (Page 373). Tall Jake replies to Seth saying that Luke was taken because he asked. Luke knew the risk of surviving in Malice and knew the challenging tests ahead, but he still called on Tall Jake. Also Tall Jake brought up the point that people asked him to take them. From what he is saying, he wouldn’t just randomly target people. He wouldn’t have came if no one hasn’t done the ritual. He made it clear to everyone what will happen. Everyone who did the ritual knew of the consequences. They wanted to take the risks and because of that they made their own problem.

In the book Havoc, the narrator is recapping what happened in between the books Malice and Havoc. The narrator is telling the reader what Justin and Kady did after Seth left. The narrator talks about how they traveled to the city and stopped by a village where they were taken in by the villagers. The villagers were strangers to them but still gave them food and advice about traveling through Malice. The narrator then tells the reader Kady’s thoughts and what she reflected from that experience by saying the following. “The kindness of the villagers encouraged Kady. Maybe Malice wasn’t all horror and misery, after all” (Page 36). In the book of Malice, Kady saw nothing but only death and chaos both when reading the comic and when she was taken into the world, so she came to a point of view that Malice is all horror and misery. The narrator is slowly changing the viewpoint of Malice by simply slipping in that Kady’s thought that Malice may not be about just only chaos and might be a nice place. Kady and Justin moved away from all the chaos into a village where there is peace. They could have easily done this earlier but instead stayed where all the chaos was giving us the first impression of Malice as evil.

In the book Havoc Alicia decided to assist Seth with his mission to get back to Malice after saving him from a monster. They are on their way to Birmingham to an abandon factory and Alicia is talking to Seth worried about lying to her parents. “It’s all crazy. This whole thing is crazy.’ she went on. She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘I lied to my parents. I never lie to my parents. If they knew I was skipping study and going to Birmingham with some boy I barely know, they’d kill me.” (Page 74). Alicia is worried and feels bad about lying to her parents and traveling with Seth. Yet no one told her to lie or help him, she made the choice herself. She could had just left Seth where he was after saving him and could do what she had to do. Instead however, she lied causing her to be in the situation she is in and later get kidnapped.

A French existentialist philosopher named Jean-Paul Sartre known for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth quoted “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” Connecting this quote to Havoc, Seth blamed Tall Jake for his friend Luke’s death and Tall Jake said he was only testing him and his downfall was his own. Tall Jake almost says the quote by Sartre in his own words. It wasn’t tall Jake’s fault, it was only Luke’s. We are all responsible for our own lives and the choices we make. Luke made his choices, he made the choice to do the ritual, he made the choices in Malice on how to survive. What end up happening was he made the a choice that caused him to meet his end.

This structure is important because it adds a spin to the whole story. The new point of view makes you think of everything you read into a whole other way. It makes Tall Jake not such as a bad person. He did what people want, not his own thing. Also it makes you think that the “heroes” weren’t in the situation by fate.They were in the situation because they were looking for trouble not because they were thrown into it. Another point thrown at the reader is that we are responsible for our choices and lives not others. We are the reason for our dilemmas in our existence and it is our choice to make them dyer, severe, or just drop them.

Chris Wooding & Dan Chernett. Havoc. New York: Scholastic Press, 2010. Print

Satre, Jean Paul. "Existentialism Is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sarte 1946." Existentialism Is a Humanism. World Publishing Company, Feb. 2005. Web. 14 Jan. 2015.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm