Bad Behaviour Book Report

When I was ten I enjoyed many things. I revelled in sport, movies, video games, and more sport. I was active, yet lazy. My dreams driven by that and that alone, dreams. I had no drive for success, for improvement, or even competition. I expected all my dreams would come true with little or no work. A question was raised in class at primary school; “what are your dreams?”. Instinctively I wrote ‘be a player in the NRL’. I was proud of my dreams, and I let people know them. This day they were met with a, ‘I hope God brings these to fruition’, from our Scripture teacher.

Once a fortnight we were forced to sit down and listen to a withering old lady from the local Uniting Church speak about God. The class dragged for an hour. There were few activities

For me, this was most evident through the theme of Homosexuality. Although the book is renowned as being predominately about bullying and the ramifications physical and emotional abuse can have over time. In Bad Behaviour I saw a distinct focus on the manifestation of homosexual feelings in high school, which were unhealthily repressed until adulthood. Once these feelings were realised, and her true self came through, the consequences of years of repression were seen, mostly through her relationship with her mother and a polygamous

By grounding the story in school, and around the phenomenon of spirituality, I was able to use the notions of space, place, and time. First I established the cultural and social setting of the piece, being in Mid-West New South Wales. This was to give the audience idea of where my struggles where taking place, in an odd mixture of highly spiritual, and not at all, people. Similarly, to Starford’s depiction of Melbourne, I attempted to create a confusion emulating the emotion I was experiencing at the time. Then, through the idea of time, I could elaborate on the lasting, and still present, effects of the place I grew up and the events that took