Stereotyping In 'Shattered'

There is more to a person than the physical appearance. In Eric Walter’s novel “Shattered”, Ian Blackburn works in a soup kitchen in a mysterious and dim city. At the start of the novel he perceives the homeless as lower-class and dirty, but as Ian spends more time at the soup kitchen his experiences there change him for the better. Stereotyping can cause people not to believe that there is more to a person than their physical appearance. This is evident in Walter’s enlightening and knowledgeable characters which exist in a dark, lower-class setting.

The settings Walter uses, especially the dirty dark city, doesn’t allow the protagonist, Ian Blackburn, to think differently and encourages Ian to judge the people based on their environment.

He had a matching green toque pulled low on his head, a few days’ growths of greying, gritty beard on his face” (Walter 4). When the writer was explaining what the man was wearing, he made it seem as though the protagonist is of a much higher class and views him as a lower class person. After seeing the city and the man in the park the protagonist stereotyped the city as frightening, dark, and poor only after the first night. After first sight, the protagonist views him as a poor, homeless man and assumes he is like the setting he is in and is nothing more than his physical appearance. During this interaction with the man, the park was very dark and barely enough light squeaked through

Throughout the novel, Ian becomes friends with the homeless people that eat at the soup kitchen where he works and Ian spends time with the soup kitchen owner, Mac. It shows that there is more to a person than what you see only on the outside. Ian and Mac are walking around the city at night looking for homeless people to invite for a meal in the soup kitchen and it causes Ian to look at homeless people differently and not fear them as Mac is showing them kindness. The author explains the moment when Ian realizes how dangerous it is to live on the streets when Ian asks Mac “Have you ever found anybody who was … was …” Mac responds “Dead?” (Walter 67). Mac helped Ian understand that they are not just all bad people but they took some wrong routes in life. Ian had stereotyped all of the homeless people, he thought all they wanted was money for drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. After meeting a lot of the homeless people he soon came to realize that they made some bad decisions in life and are on the brink of death if they do not find help instead of just looking for drugs and alcohol. In front of them, there was a homeless man with dull and lifeless eyes. Ian and Mac saw the man and gave him a cigarette, then Mac informed Ian that sometimes it gets cold enough at night that they could die of hypothermia. Ian did not feel good after Mac informed him about what happens in the freezing