Notes

Written by Andy Mulligan, ‘Trash’ is about three boys who live in poverty and journey through the country to solve a mystery. I think that the book reflects strongly on poverty and police corruption. It tells of the poor conditions that Raphael, Gardo and Rat have to live in and how the community treat people like them. The two themes that will be discussed in this essay are poverty and police corruption.

The first theme is poverty. The author communicates the idea of poverty by describing where and how the people in Behala live. Behala is a dumpsite that is populated by thousands of people who scavenge through the rubbish day and night for anything that they can sell to make money. The circumstances of poverty in this book challenge me to think about myself because I realise how grateful I am for having a house, a family and an education.

‘The piles stack up - and I mean Himalayas…’ In this quote Andy Mulligan has used hyperbole. Hyperbole is a language technique that means to over exaggerate. He did this because if he said ‘the piles stack up.’. You might just think that it isn’t too high but with the use of a hyperbole, in this instance ‘ and I mean Himalayas’, it gives you a clearer understanding of actually how tall the piles of rubbish are to Raphael.


Poverty challenges me to think about the world because it makes me want the entire world to be educated in the fact that poverty affects billions of people. There are thousands of charities that help poverty but there are not enough to make a big enough difference. The world needs to be convinced that they should help these people and not wait for someone else to do it for them. I feel that society would want to help if they had a personal experience with the less fortunate, just like Olivia did when she was working in Behala. ‘I fell in love with the eyes looking at me, and the smiles.’The technique in the is quote is emotive language. Emotive language is a text that intends to create an emotional response. ‘I fell in love’ that is the part that will make you have an emotional response. It gives makes you feel what Olivia is feeling and that is love to all the children she helps. All in all poverty is a huge problem throughout the book and is just one of the issues in ‘Trash’.



The second theme is police corruption. Andy Mulligan communicates police corruption in the book because instead of the loving, selfless heroes that protect the people, the police in Behala are greedy, selfish and abuse their power. They look down at people and value what, if anything, they’re worth.

The output of police corruption in ‘Trash’ challenges me to think about myself by choosing whose side I would be on. I would be on Raphael’s side because the police killed their prisoners, innocent or guilty. When the police look down at people like Raphael, Gardo and Rat, they would be disgusted and only see garbage.

It challenged me to think about society because we need to fix the way the police are treating the people. To convince others to help we could show them what the police officers actually do to people in Behala, they beat people until they talk, they take children away from their parents and throw people out of the window when they are angry. An example of how the police look at the people of Behala is on page 66 where Raphael is being interrogated by a cop. ‘“Boy, that’s what you are, that’s what all of you are. You are a piece of garbage…”’ In this quote the technique is outer dialogue. There are two different types of dialogue, inner dialogue and outer dialogue. Dialogue is the conversation between two people. Dialogue helps by authenticating everything. If you weren’t sure whether or not they were going to one place and then it talks about the fact that they are, then it reassures you that they are. Another example of police corruption is a quote on page 70 when Raphael was thinking about the death of José Angelico. ‘Guess where he had died? He had died in a police station.’ In this quote the author has used a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a question that is not meant to be answered. This rhetorical question is left in the air for a moment so that you can think about the next thing that Raphael is about to say. Police corruption isn’t just slapping people, it goes deeper from looking down at people and abusing your power to killing people because they didn’t get what they wanted.

In conclusion, from corrupt police to poverty. I think that ‘Trash’ talks about huge problems that not just Behala face but the entire world face. We need more people to help and fight these problems or else they will never be fixed.