Vernon God Little
Explore how DBC Pierre displays his ideas to shock the audience in Vernon God Little. Vernon God Little, written by DBC Pierre, is a satirical novel based around a massacre at a high school in Texas in which some of the students got possession of a gun and murdered some of their teachers and fellow students. The novel is about a boy called Vernon who is best friends with the main killer, Jesus. Vernon is framed as an accessory to murder and the story line follows the down fall of his life.
There are lots of features of the novel that come across as very shocking to the readers. For example in chapter seven, when Vernon visit’s a psychiatrist; Dr Goosens, he puts full trust into him, because he has a well-known profession. The psychiatrist goes on to violate Vernon which, in a way, makes Vernon loose all trust in everyone, because if he doesn’t feel safe around a doctor, he doesn’t know if he will feel safe around anyone. Especially when almost everyone he used to trust has turned against him to try and frame him as an accessory to murder.
The passage in chapter seven uses grotesque imagery; “His breathing quickens with the march of his fingers, they trace a tightening circle around the rim of my hole. ” and “a cool finger invades me”. This shocks the readers because it is disturbing and because Dr Goosens is a doctor and is in a position of trust and is not expected to break this trust. DBC Pierre does this because the novel is satirical and he tries to inform the audience that people are not everything they seem and you ‘can’t read a book by it’s cover‘. A shocking character in Vernon God Little is the journalist, Lally Ledesma.
We begin to see Lally’s true colours as we progress through the novel as he becomes almost unbearable. At the beginning of the book, Lally is first presented when he is trying to interview Vernon on the massacre. Throughout the novel, he does many shocking things. For example, he uses Vernon’s mum and builds a relationship with her, just so he can get on the inside of Vernon’s life and get a good story on him for the newspapers. Vernon knows that this is what Lally wants, but his mum won’t believe him because she’s in love with Lally. 1.
Ella Bouchard – chapter 13, Vernon uses her as a prostitute. 2. Taylor – Uses Vernon and sets him up so she can get money 3. Mum – doesn’t care about anything important, just the look, fridges and her friends 4. Shock is to build up the satirical effect, and takes the mic out of america 5. Everyone wants to meet the american dream, 6. At the end, say if you think it is too shocking or not, and why you think DBC Pierre wrote it like this. 3. Vernon’s mum has her heart set on reaching the American dream, the dream that everyone is equal, and everyone has a good job, nice house and big happy family.
She doesn’t want to know about what is happening to Vernon and she is very blase towards it, because all she cares about is what she and her family looks like to her friends and the public. This is shocking to the audience of Vernon God Little because it’s not something they’d expect to happen. The audience would expect Vernon’s mum to be worried about her son and trying everything in her power to get him out of jail and out of being taken to court, but instead she is in bed with Lally Ledesma, who is using her, and worrying about what fridge to buy to impress her friends. 6.
Overall, I think that Vernon God Little is very shocking. DBC Pierre wrote Vernon God Little in shocking ways for a very important reason. He wanted the audience to realize that everything is not as it seems and society can be out of order at times. He also wanted them to think about if they were following the ‘American dream’ or whether it’s all a big lie and there’s no such thing. The novel might come across as unbearably shocking, but that is one feature of a satirical novel. The shock helps to reflect the fact that it is just a big joke and is trying to make a joke of American society.
