Okay so You guys are used to me posting Puckleberry stuff all the time. This is a paper that I wrote for my English Exam last year. Our assignment was to take a character from a book, and put that character into an important moment in American History.
So I chose Taking a look back at Mr. Harvey's childhood.
It was only allowed to be five pages. We got 10 points off for every extra line that we went over, So I feel as if this is rather vague.
I still love it nonetheless.
Enjoy3
My name is Susie Salmon, when I was fourteen years old a man named George Harvey took my life away from me. I was sent to my own place in Heaven, trapped in a perpetual childhood, watching as my family and friends grew old and moved on with their lives. I watched helplessly as Mr. Harvey went on to kill nine more girls, sending them to the same place I was. Sometimes the other girls and I would ask our mentor about him, and how he reached a breaking point. She said that we were too young to know then, but one day in the future she would tell us. One day I was taken to a place in my heaven I had never seen before, where I could look into the past and see everything that had happened to him in his past. I saw the things that truly made the puzzle of Mr. Harvey, through his eyes.
When I entered Mr. Harvey's past, it felt as if I were standing there. I was in the room, my body hovering over a young George Harvey. He was ten years old, living in Lima, Ohio. He was sitting on the floor of his living room playing with a little toy car. The first thing I heard was a slam that echoed the entire room. I could feel the floor shake underneath my feet, I was frightened, and so was George. I could see the fear in his eyes when his father stumbled into the room, cursing at Mr. Harvey and slamming things around. There was a bottle of rum in his hand, and I could smell the alcohol seeping out of his pores. "Better get a drink, George, cause shit's changin' soon." He shoved the brown bottle of rum into Mr. Harvey's face and wiggled it around. "They passed the damn 18th Amendment today, alcohol ain't bein' sold no where anymore." He took a swig and kept talking, "Screw the damn Government, I'm a man, I do whatever the hell I wanna do." He kicked his son in the side and walked away as Mr. Harvey sat withering on the floor, trying not to cry. He knew if he cried, his dad would just come back wanting more. January 29th, 1919 was the day Mr. Harvey's life would go downhill; because that was the day the 18th Amendment was passed, and alcohol could be sold no more.
I had to take myself out of that memory. Although Mr. Harvey had caused me great pain, I couldn't bear to watch as his mental state was being ripped apart little by little. I took myself to another part of Mr. Harvey's past; a memory of his mother. They we're in the store, walking through the aisles looking at all the pretty trinkets that sat still on the wooden shelves. Young Mr. Harvey looked at them with awe, they we're quite lovely, and he wanted them for himself. "Mother, will you get me this please?" George looked up at his mother, Mary. She was slender and tall with long brown hair to the small of her back and round blue eyes. Her eyes held an incredible amount of emotion in them; they were beautiful in a dark way. I felt as if I were looking into the ocean and seeing hell. "If you want it bad enough George, take it. That's how we get things in this family. If you learn that at an early age, then everything will be yours. You have to take what you want, or else you'll never get anything." George watched as his mother pocketed an emerald ring. "Mother, isn't that wrong? Won't I get in trouble?" His mother shook her head and pocketed another ring; an opal one. "No son, this is how the world works now. You have to do things that other people might see as wrong, just like daddy and his damn illegal bar." Mr. Harvey nodded and pocketed a small painted frog, it was a thrill, and he liked it.
I sat in the backseat of the Harvey's tiny black car, watching George and his mother. Mr. Harvey was eleven, and had just stolen many objects from stores, women, and even memorials on the side of the road. He felt powerful, like no one could stop him. In his mind, he felt as if the only way to get love from his mother was to steal for her. She called him the man of the house, she told him that he was her protection from the bad things that his father was putting her through. "George, I'm so proud of you. You are really the best son a mother could ask for." George smiled at the words, happy to hear his mother say them.
When George looked out the window, he noticed two men, around the age of thirty holding out their thumbs for a ride. Mary stopped the car and rolled down the passenger side window to look at the men. "Do you need to go somewhere?" She looked through her eyelashes at them, their odor carried through the car. "Yes ma'am, we do." The two men said and Mary unlocked the door. As soon as she did, the men proceeded to attack her. Mary was smart, she told her son to close his eyes so that he could not see what was going on. Mr. Harvey's eyes shut, and it felt as if mine did too. I could no longer see what was going on; only hear it, just like Mr. Harvey. Later, I found out that I could only see what George had seen, only know what young Mr. Harvey had known. I don't know exactly what happened in that car, but I do know this. Mary Harvey and her son got away that cold December night, they narrowly escaped what was to be certain death. I only wish that I could have done the same on my December night; the night that I could still feel, hear, and see. I wish that Mr. Harvey had done what his mother had done to him; I wish he had told me to close my eyes.
James Harvey was notorious for his speakeasy, hidden in an underground
warehouse in his back yard. There, he made and sold the alcohol that the people of Lima were no
longer able to access. James wanted to be like Al Capone, the most notorious, and dangerous,
gangster in all of America. Once, James
had even tried to pick up his family and move to Chicago, so he could become a part of
Capone's criminal enterprise, The Outfit. George knew this
because his father spoke of Capone as if he were a god.
One night, when George was twelve, he was awoken by a bottle slamming against the concrete. He got out of his bed and walked towards the window, peaking out of it just a little, so that he could not be seen. "Damn you woman, get your ass up and pay for your damn beer." A shadow of a man could be seen hovering over two small women. George's heavy eyes could only see so much, but he could still make out how the man was beating the smallest of the two ladies, while her friend watched on, screaming in horror. "You have a bar tab here that's higher than my friggin' house payment, I ain't opposed to killin' a woman if it means I get my money." He kept beating her, her screams getting quieter and quieter. All I heard next was a gunshot, and I saw the shadow fall to the ground. George tried to shake it out of his mind, but that night when he went to bed, he had his first still dream; a dream that would haunt him every time he had the thirst; the thirst to kill.
Within the next couple of months, his father got more abusive. Mr. Harvey would often go to school with broken bones and large bruises that he would say came from falls down stairs and other accidents. One day, after school, George walked in on something he wished he could forget. His father was standing over his mother, cursing and beating her. She was curled up in a ball, moving only a little bit. She turned her head and looked at her son, her ocean eyes showed fear instead of hell. George yelled at his father to stop, but it didn't help. The beating only got worse. The last words George would ever hear from his mother came out in a scream; A blood-curdling scream that hit George in the stomach like a ton of bricks. "Run George! Get out of here." He did. Mr. Harvey ran as fast as he could. The next morning when he walked into the house, his mother was gone. James Harvey stood in the kitchen, staring into space. "Tell anyone, and I'll kill you son, I swear it." That was the end to that, never again did George see Mary Harvey. What he did see were more and more still dreams. More dreams urging him to kill. The same dreams he saw weeks before he killed me.
From the time he was twelve, to the time he was sixteen, many things happened in Mr. Harvey's young life. His father's speakeasy was raided after he tried to reenact Capone's Valentines Day Massacre, and James Harvey was sent to jail . George started living on his own. He befriended a girl named Elisabeth, whom became his first victim; the first girl in a line of many, many girls who were to be taken away from their lives too soon. The "Noble Experiment," which is what many people called the 18th amendment, was repealed, and Mr. Harvey's father died in prison
I stopped watching Mr. Harvey's life once it got to a point where I could no longer watch comfortably. He was a killer, a man who killed dozens of children and women. I realize now why he did it, why he told every single one of us to tell him we loved him before he took our lives away. I also understood why he took something from all of us, something to keep to remember us by. He had a stash of things; a charm from my bracelet, a shoe string from Emily, who was only four when he taken her life. Mr. Harvey was a bad man, but he wasn't all bad. Mr. Harvey was a lost soul, trying to find an out for the pain he had been caused in his past. Maybe, if he had grown up different, I would have gotten a chance to grow up too. I often wonder who I would become if things had been different, if he had grown up in a nice family with a picket fence, and a mother like one from The Brady Bunch. Maybe if that had happened, Elisabeth, Emily, the others, and I would still be here today, living the lives we were meant to live.