Stereotypes In Gail Giles's Shattering Glass

In Gail Giles’ “Shattering Glass,” a group of boys work together to make a fat, but smart, Simon Glass liked all around campus. Rob (control freak), Young, (intellectual), Coop (athletic jock), and Bob (smack talker) do all sorts of things to help Glass get nominated and ultimately win the title of senior class favorite. These kids go through different struggles to get Simon where he is at right now. Most of the boys are malignant; they cause harm and distress to the people around them, and even though the boys did not expect for things to end the way they did, Simon dies. In the novel, it reinforces the guy stereotype of guys using girls just for no reason. The group was arranged by wealthiest kids (wealthiest, the top of group, & the main

Ronna was being used by Young and the rest of the group because Rob thought it was a good idea for Simon to take Ronna to the Favorites Dance instead of Young. “Rob asks Young to let Simon have his girlfriend Ronna; Young agrees to this because he feels him and Rob are connected because they were both betrayed by someone they trusted. Rob just doesn't have them break up, he makes Young let Ronna catch him with a girl who is very familiar with much of the male student body”(shobonimaster’s journal). Boys can be very seductive when it comes to girls. Boys only want one thing from girls and it’s not to be respectful and charming. Some guys don’t care what ends up happening after they hook up. All they care about is that they hooked up. This leaves the girl disconsolate and heartbroken because she thought he was the one. Young wanted to stay with Ronna but he thought that he owed Rob a favor back. Even though Young still liked Ronna, it didn’t matter after the break up because he still used her. Young and Ronna thought the relationship would last forever, even into marriage, but it didn’t because Young was being a self-centered jerk and thought only about himself. He also thought more about Simon and class favorite then he did with his relationship with

“At the table closest to my desk were four students. Three attractive, animated girls and one, quiet, shy boy. As I covertly listened I learned that the girls were cheerleaders, very much High School Royalty. The boy was a Bill Gates prototype. But, the girls had gotten to like their nerd tablemate”(Gail Giles, How I Wrote It). Giles got the name “Simon” from the book “Lord of the Flies”, this was one of her most favorite books of all time. It made her think about the ability of power to corrupt. She named named him Simon because she wanted to show honorage to the book. “Simon is beaten to death in a frenzy of group rage in Goldman’s story and my character was going to be beaten to death in much the same way”(Gail Giles, How I Wrote It). She stated that “The Great Gatsby” also influenced the book. In Fitzgerald’s novel, the narrator [Nick] was not that quite reliable. So, when she decided to finish writing the novel, she decided to make Young the narrator and make him not as reliable like Nick. Gail Giles thought of everything when she started to write this novel. It took her about a year to write most of it, but then she had a challenge on how to end it. She thought it ended too fast, so she put it away for another year. After that year, she brought it back and continued to finish it. While writing it she thought, “What if the girls weren’t just being nice--suppose they had some