Judge Cormier: An Analysis Of Peter's Bullying

The story starts off with a bang, literally. The beginning of the story explains the day of the shooting where Peter shot 29 people, and blew up Matt Royston’s car. Then after that, the story goes through explaining different instances in Peter’s life, beginning with kindergarten where he was bullied and tormented for being different. In these flashbacks, the reader learns that Peter and Josie used to be really close friends, but they grew apart when they got older because Josie did not want to stand out and be made fun of so she joined the popular crowd. The story will also flash forward to the present and explain Josie’s life, and her mother the judge. While we see flashbacks of Peter’s bullying, the present moments are about Judge Cormier

One of the questions that Jodi asks: is can a victim retaliate? This is a question that even after the book is read seems to have no easy answer. Even though Peter became a murderer, the amount of abuse he had received to push him to that point almost makes Peter’s actions seem as a method of self-defense. However, even then, is it ever okay to become the bully? Another purpose of this story is to show how easy it is to judge a person, and how a simple judgment can dramatically affect another person’s life. This entire book is filled with judgments. Matt judges Josie on what she eats and says that she will become fat, which causes Josie to doubt herself. Josie judges Peter because he is different and therefore she is no longer his friend. Alex Cormier says it best “Who has the right to judge someone else?” she wondered, “No one, she had said. And yet, here she was doing it” (Picoult, 2007 p. 83). Everyone always says that no one should judge others, and yet everyone does it. This book brings this thought to the surface and shows just how much damage a small judgment can make. This book should be used to address school’s bullying policy. It is not just enough to have a policy in place; teachers need to know how to act in order to stop bullying in its tracks. When a student no longer feels safe at school, and they do not think that their teachers will stand up for them, that is when they take matters into their own hands, like Peter did. Another way that this work can be used, is for high school students who may not feel like they fit in. This book may show the worst of what someone can do, but it also shows at the end that even though he felt alone, Peter was not alone. Josie was still his friend, his parents cared for him, and other people in the school were there for him, like Angela Phlug who wrote him a letter and said, “ I liked your smile. I would have