Do you guys think what happened to Todd was inevitable? And why? If so, when do you think he reached the "point of no return," and if not, how do you think he could have avoided that fate? You could answer the same question with regard to Dussander too if you wanted to.
Hey guys on a different note, don't forget to do your vocab project.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that what happened to Todd was inevitable. It could have been prevented. At any point during his and Dussander's talks, either of them could have decided to cut off the talks altogether. It would have been hard, but it could have been done. Todd's interest in Dussander's stories was high, but he should have had it under control. Even the adults in the story should have been more involved and notice that something was wrong. Todd should not have been allowed to go that far. There was a lot of anger in him, but it could have been controlled, had someone tried to control it, whether it be Todd, Dussander, or his parents. Todd could have also dealt with his anger in other ways. He was just a boy and didn't know how to do that well, but with help he could have.
ReplyDeleteI think another important question that could be incorporated here is how the title, Summer of Corruption, fit into the story.
I'm gonna take the middle road. I think that what happened to Todd was inevitable, but not the whole time. I think that at the beginning, when Todd first started visiting Dussander, he could have easily stopped those visits, and avoid what happened. However, after Todd tried to kill Dussander, and Dussander told him about the safety deposit box, there was no turning back. Although it was not even really there, the idea of the safety deposit box got into Todd's head, and like Dussander said, there would always be a chance that there could be something like that. From then on, I believe that Todd and Dussander's lives had been permanently binded together, and there was no way to separate them once again. If one went down, the other one would too, which is what happened, Dussander going down and bringing Todd with him.
ReplyDeleteAs for Andrew's question, I think the connection is pretty obvious, that Todd had been corrupted into having the life that he did. However, it's kind of confusing as to what caused this. Personally, I think Todd was corrupted by himself, sort of like the evil inside him corrupted the other part of his personality, his childhood innocence. I think another question could be, what do you think Todd was corrupted by? Himself, Dussander, or the society he lived in?
I think that after Todd started visiting Dussander, it was over for him and his death was inevitable. However, the inevitability only came into effect after a few visits when Todd really saw that all of this was real. The stories made him fantasize about death and death became a need for him. Todd reached a point of no return, I believe, when his grades started slipping. That's when I think he couldn't live without Dussander's stories. Being that fascinated with death led to killing, which ended in Todd's death. So, I think his death was inevitable.
ReplyDeleteThe title is, as Dan said, obvious. But to answer Dan's question, I don't think it's that simple. Everything around him corrupted him, and you have to keep in mind that Dussander was corrupted as well. He justifies his killings with the fact that he was just following orders. It's obvious to me at least that Dussander was corrupt from the start, but he sort of went into a period of time when he wasn't completely corrupted. Then Todd came along, mostly because he thought that private eyes and old war magazines were cool, and influenced Dussander to once again corrupt himself. However, because Dussander was recorrupting himself, his stories corrupted Todd as well. A good question would be whether or not there were factors that didn't corrupt either of them. Everything accounted for a bit of corruption- school causing Todd to start lying, Todd's parents not being as inquisitive as they should have been, even the Nazi costume Todd gave to Dussander because of the way it made Dussander feel. Was there anything in the book that didn't corrupt them?
I don't see how Dussander was corrupt from the start at all. He started off "being corrupt" by killing the thousands of Jews in a concentration camp, and yet this was only out of fear of his own life if I am correct. They were given a task, and they had to do it. End of story. After Hitler's fall, Dussander flees for his life and commits no further crimes (excluding falsifying documents and such in order to survive) and until Todd came along, Dussander was not doing anything wrong and trying to live his life as peacefully as he could. When Dussander's dreams returned and when he had to tell stories to Todd, the past that was forced upon him by Hitler and the need for survival was renewed by Todd. Both of these were forced upon him, and yet Dussander is seen as the primary evil in all of this. I believe that Todd was the one who truly became corrupt, and that he in turn forcefully made Dussander more evil than he had ever truly been.
ReplyDeleteAs for whether or not Todd's demise was inevitable, I think it was. His fascination with death and his sense of ultimate power (because of his outstanding grades and being a great athlete) over Dussander made him become more evil than Dussander had ever been. Todd's good qualities were lost, he became only evil, the story progresses, and the still adolescent Todd is forced to go against (essentially) the world once Dussander dies. This is way too much for him, and I would even say by this point he would be considered legally insane, and surely enough, he dies within days of Dussander's death.
Todd was given a sense of power and control over Dussander (the true victim here) and in the end, it was Rubber Ed and his family who lost out =(.
The point of no return was Dussander and Todd first meeting, because as soon as Todd say this opportunity, he would obviously seize it. Todd was far too smart to not seize this chance, and because of this, he had no chance to turn back now that his soul was becoming evil and filled with death. Todd was sort of like the super evil genius in Comic books and movies who was given an infinite bank account that he could use to fund his evil schemes. Or something.
Anyways, Apt Pupil was my favorite book of the three.
I think that as soon as Todd met Dussander and they started their meetings the process of corruption had begun, which was Todd's point of no return. Starting from then on, Todd became destined to have a violent life. Throughout the story he would have very violent and evil thoughts, mostly thinking about killing people who annoyed him, including his parents. In a way he reminds me of Holden Caulfield, since they are both very lonely and isolated due to their poor perceptions of people. As we know from Catcher in the Rye, this mindset is not very good, and it is reflected in Todd. After meeting Dussander, Todd seems to never associate with any friends and he seems to hate and want to kill almost everyone. So first meeting Dussander corrupted Todd and being exposed to such evil doomed him.
ReplyDeleteHowever, whether or not Todd would end up murdering a bunch of people and having a huge standoff against the police is a different story. I think Todd, after being exposed to Dussander, would inevitably have a life filled with hate and violence, but actually committing murder and finally being taken down by the police could have been avoided. Todd, even though he constantly had violent thoughts, was able to conceal these thoughts and on the outside convinced people that he was a nice, normal person. I think he could have continued to act like this and contained his violence and evil without ending up killing people and being killed. He let his corrupted thoughts get to him, though, and he couldn't control them so he ended up committing very bad acts.