Don’t Call Me Ishmael
In the novel Don’t Call Me Ishmael by Michael Gerard Bauer, one of the characters, James Scobie is represented as an intelligent and quirky, fearless and confident student. But as we read on we find out that there is a secret that stops Scobie from feeling fear and it comes back later in the story as a repercussion which results in Ishmael and the rest of the debating team having to improvise.
Scobie is an intelligent but unusual sort of character as he is extremely smart but has an unusual habit of screwing up his face and doing abnormal things involving his face. From the moment he arrives at St Daniels he is described in hurtful and unflattering words. The face that Barry Bagsley made when he saw Scobie walk into the class was “like a kid that had just been given a Christmas present” (p57). Bauer uses metaphors such as “with his face writhing and his tongue popping in and out like a moray eel” (p59). The use of metaphors such as these give the reader an image of Scobie and how and what he …show more content…
But the moment that Scobie walked in the new class there was unquestionably something very offbeat about him and I am sure no one would have ever guessed he was fearless. Saying something like “I’m not afraid of anything” (p70) to Barry would usually result in a desk full of bugs or a beating. But even threats like this to Scobie don’t faze him one bit. The reason Scobie doesn’t feel fear is a result of “Removing a brain tumour” (p74) but despite this Barry still wants to test it so he decides to put all the “Mummy, arachnophobia and A Bugs life all rolled into one” (p84) into Scobie’s desk in hope of a great reaction. Unfortunately for Barry this completely fails and furthermore results in “The cruellest blow of all” (p92) with “Brother Jerome giving him the ‘last warning’ speech” (p93). This for sure shut Barry up and made Scobie a school