Buckingham Palace: District 6

Topic 1: “The characters of Buckingham Palace; District 6 are not admirable, they are thieves, liars and prostitutes.” Keeping in mind the term relative morality, discuss how we can conclude, that after reading this novel, that people cannot be viewed so superficially. When the characters of District 6 are analysed superficially they are not admirable. Mary is a prostitute; Zoot has a criminal record and beats people up. And Mrs Knight goes to church every Sunday and is happily married with 3 children. If you judge these people superficially, you would think Mrs Knight would be the optimum person you could trust to go to in this community if you had a crisis. However once you get to know these characters you realise that Mrs Knight will, in fact, judge you, be angry at you and gossip about you because of your problem. Mary will help you and comfort you in the best way that she can. And Zoot will be likely to collect the Boys’ and get even with whoever has caused your problem. Therefore because of relative morality we begin to see that even though these people are dishonest, lie and cheat it doesn’t mean they are bad and immoral people, they just do what they have to to survive.
If you look at Zoot ostensibly, and judge him as you would a book by its cover, you will see a man that is a liar, that uses his “guardian angel” to shift blame off of himself as an excuse for doing wrong. You would see a man that is dishonest and has not payed the rent for 15 years, a man that beats people up and is an ex-prisoner. However this is all relative, once you delve deeper into this character you grasp that he does these things for a reason, because to him it is simply something he must do to right a wrong. This is shown when he, The Jungle Boys and Pretty Boy beat up Elvis for molesting Faith. “Elvis was unceremoniously flung into the back of the van”, “They methodically set to work on him. Each one had his turn. Elvis was lying