SuitabookEthics of the undead
Loren Schechter
- Reading
- Before reading, ask how the teenagers might protect one another in an unsafe institution. Afterwards, return to the trial and discuss which choices seem fair, necessary or morally troubling.
- Themes
- Ethics and survival: Human teenagers are kept among vampires who thirst for them, while some vampires are described as ethical and the teenagers face choices including escape, death or joining the undead. The book?s stance on this remains unclear.
- Trust and solidarity: Four teenagers from different racial and ethnic backgrounds are drawn together, and their faith, friendship and love are tested in the vampire school. The group’s differences and relationships appear important, but it is unclear whether the story develops them deeply or how tensions are resolved.
- Authority and justice: Kathy and Lionel are put on trial for murder in a vampire court while trapped inside the school. The court creates a question about who gets to define justice, but the fairness of the proceedings and the characters’ guilt are unknown.
- Worth knowing
- Expect sustained peril, threats of death, references to murder, a character placed on a kill list, terror from a teacher and the possibility of becoming undead. The treatment of these elements and the ending are unclear.