By Penelope Lively
Do you know about violence or bullying, or just heard about before? If you have or want to hear a short story about this kind of story, you might lie down and read this. In the text ”Next Term, we’ll mash you” we hear about this boy Charles who get threatened by some guys at his new school, because he is the ”new member.” How bad can it actually be?
Next Term, we’ll Mash you is about a young boy named Charles who is sitting in a car with his parents. They are going to visit St Edward Preparatory school where Charles is going to start. When they come to the school the mother consider it as a lovely place. Charles and his parents are waiting for the headmaster, but meanwhile is the headmaster’s wife taking Charles out to see some of the boys and see what he might be letting himself in for. After seeing the boys at the school, he finds out how they are treating new members.
”Inside the car it was quiet. The boy sat on the back seat, a box of chocolates unopened, beside him and a comic folded” inside the car is there a quiet unhappy boy who is sitting in the back seat, while his parents drive him to his new school. The atmosphere is quiet because it is tens inside the car, nobody are talking especially not Charles. He has nothing to say, because this is not his own option for the new school. His parents have choosing the school for their own sake and not for his. Charles parents want him to go at that school because they have heard; there is nice people, and a friend of them Simon Wilcox has also gone there.
In the car is he sitting with an unopened chocolates box, which symbolizes his self-worth? A chocolates box shows his bad confidence, because it seems like the chocolate box is just something he comforts himself with, which can means that he might be fat. His bad confidence shows how weak he is, like in the text where the boys start to ask him questions and were looking at him with their strange faces,