Andy Mulligan's Trash

Trash

The novel ‘Trash’ by Andy Mulligan is about three young boys named Raphael, Gardo and Rat. The boys live in a place called Behala dumpsite, they live their life sorting through peoples trash to scrounge up what they can just to get a couple of pesos, But, one day Raphael found something quite different, different to the normal pieces of scrap paper and bits of plastic. He found a bag, now this isn’t just any old bag; this bag changed all their lives quite drastically. From this point on, the police are all over them trying to snatch the secrets hiding in this particular bag.

The setting of Behala dumpsite highlights the issue of poverty. The descriptive language used to described the setting such a “All over the city, trash bags

The structure of the novel, using newspaper excerpts, presents a third person point of view of the character. The two newspaper articles written about the Vice President from ‘INQUIRER’ and ‘University Voice’ talk about Zapata in two different but similar ways, they both hint at what a selfish person he is and how he is not good for the country. INQUIRER talks about how he is “extremely concerned at the loss, that is the theft – of an undisclosed sum of money from his property last week “, they talk about how he has not accomplished much in the recent years of power, “senator Zapanta achieved notoriety just three years ago when he ordered police to clear squatter camps to make way for his ground-breaking cinema/shopping complex.” This news article talks very negatively towards Vice President Zapanta, University Voice states that “Enough is enough” University Voice talks about Regis Zapanta keeping millions of dollars of cash in his home suggests that he is part of a corrupt other world. They say how Zapanta has spent more money on lining his pockets, and all he has achieved is making the country feel poor and worthless. The reader feels a negative passion towards Vice President Regis Zapanta because of the way he is running the country to