Novel, Catch Us If You Can – One
Decision That You Disagree
In the novel you have studied
• Pick any one decision in the novel made by someone or some party that you disagree
• Pick any one decision in the novel made by someone or some party that you disagree
• Explain why you
disagree.
Support your answer with evidence from the novel.
Support your answer with evidence from the novel.
SAMPLE ANSWER
In the novel „Catch
Us if You Can‟ by Catherine MacPhail, there is one decision in the novel that I
disagree with. It is the one taken by the government to separate both Rory and
his grandfather.
Rory and Granda are very close and each depends on the other for love and comfort. They are family, a “double act” and one cannot survive without the other. When Granda accidently starts a fire in the flat, the State makes a decision to put him in a home because he may endanger himself and others. I was so mad with the State.
I can understand that the State has the interest of Rory and Granda at heart when it makes this decision. But, what makes me disagree is that it regards them as only a “case” on which it needs to act, not as people with feelings. It is because each citizen has a right to run his or her life the way he or she wants to without outside interference. Unfortunately, it did not happen that way.
In addition, no discussion has been held with Rory and Granda how best to solve the problem. When the two run away, however, the police go after them as if they are criminals. As a person interviewed on a television rightly said, the police are wasting their time hunting down an old man and a young boy instead of chasing criminals and fighting the gun culture. The way the State tackled the situation pissed me off.
As a conclusion, people should be treated with greater respect and compassion and not like “cases” to be solved.
