The edge is a young adult novel written by a British writer, Alan Gibbons. The novel tells a story of a 15 years old boy Danny escaped from an abusive home with his mother, Cathy and how they are trying to make a new life in the "promised land”. This novel discusses different types of prejudice, from racism to age discrimination by telling how each character was affected by prejudice.
Firstly, the characters were significantly affected by the discrimination on race. The main character, Danny was discriminated against because of his skin color when he came to Edgecliff, the small town in the countryside of England. Life in Edgecliff was his first time experiencing a major racism as opposed to London, the multiracial city where he used to live. His neighbor, Steve put up a fight with him and his own grandfather didn't want anything to do with him. When his mother was pregnant, his grandfather, Harry drove his father, Des away as Harry hated Des for not only having a relationship with
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The antagonist of the novel, Chris was influenced by the portrait of toxic masculinity. Chris believed that he needs to be strong and take a dominance over others which might be because of how media portraits men or because of how he was raised as a child. Therefore, after he began his relationship with Cathy, he controlled her and treated her as if she was his possession, resulting Cathy to suffer from domestic violence. At the same time, Danny was also affected by Chris's sexism by not having a normal and healthy family and blaming himself for not being able to protect his mother. Moreover, Joan also suffered from the sexism by her husband, Harry. Harry made Cathy run away from home when she gave birth to Danny which made Joan incensed and stopped loving Harry. However, Joan didn't divorce Harry nor did she acted against him. This may be from the idea came from before where a woman has to obey her husband and do whatever her husband