Colin a 12 year old boy interested me from the book The Fat Man by Maurice Gee. Colin is a hungry boy caught up by the effects of the Depression. He learns from the fat man that his dad was a bully in school and the fat man wants revenge for what they did to him. Colin is interesting because of the time he lives in and because he has to learn truths about his parents and being brave and helping Verna.
We learn from the book that Colin is a hungry skinny 12 year old boy who is always desperate for food. As it was the Depression there was not enough money to buy food to eat. Laurie (Colin’s father) has trouble finding a job and getting enough money to feed his family. In the book it tells us that Colin is a hungry boy with the quotation “Colin Potter was a hungry boy.” The other quotation “They were hard times. There were hungry times” tell us that Colin’s dad can’t find a job and get money that they need to buy food and they were quite hungry when Laurie couldn’t earn money. I thought this was interesting as it is different from how children nowadays are being brought up in New Zealand and having enough food for the whole family to have plenty to replenish their hunger when we are hungry. It is hard to imagine how New Zealand children were like during the Depression, hungry for food.
Colin is interesting because he has a scary encounter with the fat man and learns that he wants revenge for being bullied by Colin’s father at school. Colin meets the fat man at the creek. The fat man holds him back even though he doesn’t want to and discovers Colin had stolen his chocolate. The fat man soon discovers that Maisie and Laurie were Colin’s parents. The fat man tells Colin about his parents. How his father bullied him at school and farting and blaming everything on the fat man. Laurie and his friends also spat sandwiches everyday at the fat man and made him eat them. “I