The Struggle between Appearance and Reality in Novel the Hate U Give

Angie Thomas’s award winning 2017 novel The Hate U Give is a story that is all too familiar to many Americans: an unarmed black man shot by the police, for the simple crime of being black. Even with the outcrys of a community, the officer gets off with little to no punishment, while the dead is criminalized. THUG is a depiction of the battle between appearance and reality that happens commonly in the black community, and it uses news media and tumblr to accomplish this.

The news is most people’s source of information,when done right it can enlighten the masses to the truth of a situation, but when it’s done wrong it can have disastrous outcomes. Tv and movies have taught us about hard hitting reporters that will stop at nothing to get to the truth, unfortunately in reality reports just look at the surface of a problem. This is especially true for Khalil, he was described as a drug dealing thug. When Hailey brings up Khalil she says “They said the drug dealers name was Khalil”(Thomas 112) To be fair he did deal drugs, but he didn’t have much of choice. The news’ depiction of Khalil had a major impact on the grand jury. Drug dealers are generally assumed to be dangerous, so it makes the grand jury would take 115’s side. The thing is 115 had no knowledge of Khalil dealing, the only thing he knew was that Khalil was black. During the interview with 115’s father, Khalil was made out to be a dangerous gang banger, who cursed at 115 and said “I’ gon’ show your ass today”(Thomas 247). While 115 was a sixteen year veteran of the force, who just “wanted to get home to his family”(Thomas 247). At every chance possible, Khalil and Starr were made out to dangerous evil doers threatening the innocent police officer. Instead of checking for a consistency with Starr’s statement, the news just blindly put it out. This had dire consequences, causing the grand jury to not indict 115 which then caused riots,fire, and blood to spill..

The use of Tumblr tries to combat the news by posting stories and photos of Khalil. Starr uses Tumblr to show that Khalil was human, not the drug slinging demon the news made him out to be, The most effective post was tagged “the Khalil i know was afraid of animals”(Thomas 205). In this post retells the story of when her and Khalil went a ranch and Khalil was absolutely terrified of horse. It was so effective, because it directly contrasted the news tough and fearless depiction of Khalil. After Starr’s initial post, people starting posting about Khalil to oppose the media’s one dimensional depiction of Khalil.

Throughout the book we see a multitude of different cultures such as the school culture, political culture, black community culture, many of these Starr belongs to. The most predominant culture we see is the black community. We see the unfiltered reality of the community, from gangs, drugs to mom&pop shops that are pillars of the community, In Starr’s life, we see the worst of it. We see how what should have been a peaceful protest turned into riots and blood baths. How communities and families struggle to stay in one piece. The death that sets everything in motion is the death of Khalil. In Chapter 2 we read about it, and the light hearted tone turns to grief and mourning. The passage said, “One. Khalil’s body jerks. Blood splatters from his back. He holds on to the door to keep himself upright. Pow! Two. Khalil gasps. Pow! Three. Khalil looks at me, stunned. He falls to the ground.” (Thomas 23). From this moment on the reader felt Starr’s sorrow. The point of this is to show the reader how it feels to have someone you know taken from you, and how it happens to often.

The further we get into the book the more we learn about how Starr deals with Khalil’s death. We get a little bit of information about how the black community feels his death from the Khalil t-shirts. Humans are pack animals. Most of the time we don’t realize how important our pack is until we lose part it. The pain we feel from loss is unlike any other. What we do about it defines who we are as people. Towards the end of the book, Ms. Ofrah leads a protest in that is stopped by the police. The situation became much more intense when the police were pushing everyone back. At that moment, Starr climbed on top of a police car and let everyone know that she was the witness. She led out a chant that said over and over, “Khalil lived!” Shortly after, there was a massive breakout of violence with tear gas, fire, injuries and many more. When you watch this scene in the film you see how the black community feels about the death of Khalil and tand the lack of justice. This is important because this is the type of life the black community has to live with every day in the book/film

The media and culture mentioned previously show an important connection. It shows us how the black community truly feels about the life they have to live. Although the News and police attempt to silence, them, social media gives them a voice that they don’t have in real life, and when their voice is not heard, they WILL make their voices heard. They give themselves a voice, they won’t let it slip away. They protest protest against the injustices against them. They want to feel safe when walking down the street. They want to feel human, not like a hunted animal.

Some may like this book, some may not. Personally I liked the book, but not the ending initially. .The way Thomas writes the characters make them feel like real people, not just characters in a book. The one problem i had was the ending, it felt incomplete and without closure. As I was writing this review, I started to see THUG as an allegory for police brutality in the black community. I then realized how perfect the ending was. The readers, like the families who lose some to police brutality, are left with an empty feeling, hoping for closure or justice that will never come.

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