Letters from the inside

I thought that I would start posting on some of the other novels studied at the College and I am starting with Letters from the Inside. The author of Letters from the Inside John Marsden wrote the novel after a number of stories started to accumulate in his head and he had to write them down. One story that contributed to the novel was a from a Year 12 girl who hated going home for the holidays because of her violent brother. The girl was terrified of him as he beat her up on a regular basis. The girl had told her parents about her brother’s behaviour but they told her to “ignore it” and that it was “just a stage”.

Marsden could not stop thinking about this dark and troubling situation and he was relieved to hear that the girl was safe and flatting with friends and that her story didn’t end disastrously like Mandy’s.

Marsden was also fascinated by the idea of letters bing exchanged between people, where one writer has no real knowledge of the other. He looked for characters with the “right voice” and he knew he needed three voices: the voice of Mandy, who had to sound like the girl next door, a typical Australian teenager; the false voice of Tracey, which had to sound too good to be true; and the real voice of Tracey.

For John Marsden writing Tracey’s false voice was fun. He was able to indulge himself and write in a “slightly mushy style, that was more reminiscent of Mills & Boon or Sweet Valley High” than his usual writing. He enjoyed writing Tracey’s true identity and found himself getting drawn into the mystery and suspense and caught up in the two girls world. By telling Tracey’s story Marsden wanted to show that under the aggression and bravado was someone who was badly hurt. He believes that happy well balanced people don’t commit crimes and that those who do need help and support. He didn’t want readers to have sympathy for Tracey or other criminals but he wanted them to have understanding. Tracey is not a nice person, nor an attractive one as she is violent and full of rage and hatred. She is unwilling to face the truth or face the consequences of her actions but we need to understand why she is like this.

Letters from the Inside has a moral balance: people like Mandy, innocent people, keep dying because people like Tracey don’t accept the consequrnces of their actions because they can’t confront the reality of their lives. Marsden believes, “As long as the Traceys of the world don’t take any responsibility, the Mandys of the world will keep getting killed.

I have added a student’s essay on John Marsden’s novel ‘Letters from the Inside’ below. This Level One essay was written in exam conditions in 25 minutes. The question is from the early days of NCEA and I think that it is less challenging than recent ones but it is a good one to kick off your revision. It would be great if you had some comments to make on the essay, so don’t be shy!

Describe an idea that interested you in the text. Explain why this idea interested you.

“Letters from the Inside” by John Marsden is an unforgettable novel that presents many important ideas through its text. Perhaps the most important of these is violence and its harmful effects.
Violence affects both main characters in this book in different ways. Mandy and Tracey both experience some form of violence that deeply impacts upon their lives long after the damage is done. Mandy encounters violence within the home by her brother Steve. Steve is a disturbed teenage boy who has no friends, will apparently drop out of high school and has turned into a weapons freak. Steve is very abusive and violent towards Mandy, beating her up when no one is home. We know that Mandy is frightened of that part of Steve’s nature that he can’t control when she says “you know, the most frightening thing in my life is Steve;” yet she has no one she can turn to for help. Mandy’s parents “working their lives away” do not realise the extent of the problem and suggest it is “only a phase” Steve is going through. Mandy takes to locking her door and turns to Tracey for help.
Tracey; so familiar with violence in her own life, chooses to ignore Mandy’s problems with Steve and offers no real advice. Mandy continues to be afraid. She sees Steve’s behaviour worsen as a result of everybody ignoring her.
Although we are left guessing as to why Mandy stops writing it is hinted that Steve has killed the whole family, with his gun which he spent hours cleaning, on Christmas Eve. Terrifying – some may venture even to say immoral – as this scenario is, it is not in the least far-fetched. I became curious as to how the Steve’s of the world are allowed to remain unchecked and ignored. I was also frustrated because everyone was seeing that “whenever Steve gets mad – and you never know what could make him mad, it could be any little thing – the only way he ever reacts is violently’. Steve had been suspended from school for bullying, yet nobody really helped Mandy or Steve when Mandy explained about her brother being unable to control his terrible temper. Marsden wanted his readers to realise that unless we rethink our attitudes towards violence people like Mandy, innocent people, will keep dying because people like Steve cant accept the consequences of their actions.
Tracey is another victim of violence. She recounts frightful incidents where she had witnessed her mother being hurt and beaten by her father. “Then I read to the end and found it was my mother who he’d murdered.” Clearly, Tracey’s father was an abusive man who killed her mother. For Tracey violence was normal, something that was simply always there. Tracey, however, dealt with violence in a way that was very different to Mandy. “I did some stupid things, like sleeping under the bed,” she tells Mandy in one of her letters.
Tracey continued the pattern of violence and ended up in Garrett, a girls’ maximum-security detention centre. Although we are not told Tracey’s crime, the length of her prison sentence indicates it was very serious. Tracey has probably killed somebody or hurt someone badly.
This idea of the cycle of violence interested me because sadly, violence in this sense is becoming a more and more common reality. In the case of Steve and Mandy we must never brush violence off with the “boys will be boys” approach. Mandy’s parents left it too late. Violence and its effects is a strong theme throughout the novel. A shocking novel “Letters from the Inside” carries an important message: we must always take violence in any form as a serious issue. Violence exists as a horrifying truth in our world. It is time to come to terms and deal with it. This means that as a society we need to rethink our attitudes towards getting limits to acceptable behaviour.