Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Jolt – Bernard Beckett

There is a strong theme of revenge in the novel ‘Jolt’ by Bernard Beckett. The author sees revenge as a natural, innate reaction to being ‘harmed’, but very openly ‘preaches’ that one should resist this emotional reaction, controls one emotion, and desists from harming others. To practise revenge just repeats a cycle in which innocent people get hurt and lowers the victim to the level of the perpetrator.

Its beginning is revealed in the diary structure through Marko’s stream of consciousness, its deliberate use is explained in the retrospective narrative story; and its execution in the diary both as part of the stream of consciousness and as the conclusion to the narrative story. The senselessness of practising revenge is expressed through Lisa’s outburst to Marko in the cemetery in the final chapter

The theme revenge comes into contact with the reader on the first page of the novel, when Marko takes us back to his primary school days. “A girl in my class, her name was Susanna, told on me, and I was kept in all lunchtime. That afternoon I wagged school for the very first time. I looked up Susanna’s address in a phone box, walked twenty minutes to her house, and having checked that there was nobody home, strangled both her pet rabbits. I can’t tell you how much better that made me feel”. This quote being on the very first page, sets the theme for the whole story…. revenge.

Marko expresses his feelings toward the doctor in his diary entries. He has planned the execution of the doctor since the very first diary entry. Marko believes the doctor is trying to kill him; therefore he is adamant to kill the doctor before his predictions become reality. “Plenty of time for the doctor to make his plans, to invent excuses for the drugs he thinks he is giving me. Well I have plans of my own now, plans I will not let him see. Plans of rabbits, plans of revenge. Plans to take surviving, and...