A Novel's Worth of Examples

Throughout the novel Eleanor & Park Eleanor is often the one on the receiving end of rude comments and actions from other students at her school. Tina is the one who bullies Eleanor on a regular basis. Tina makes rude comments about Eleanor’s size, is one of the girls who covered her gym locker in pads and also put her clothes in the toilet. These are all examples of how one single person has targeted another individual in order to show their power over them. The bullying starts on Eleanor’s first day of school, she gets on the school bus to find that nobody will let her sit with them until finally one boy moves over but not before muttering “Jesus-fuck, just sit” (Rowell 9) under his breath. School is not the only place that Eleanor is picked on, her home is not even a safe space for her. Towards the end it is revealed that her step-father Richie was the one who was leaving the extremely rude and offensive comments on her books. It is not just one time where these things happen, over the span of 325 pages there are more than 20 instances of behaviour that could be considered bullying. This is what true bullying behavior is. This attention is unwanted by Eleanor, she even asked for it to stop but still it continued on, numerous times. She told her teacher but nothing was done about it because there was no physical proof of who the bullies were in her case. As time went on she tried to ignore them and became quite good at doing so in school but her home situation became harder. Her step-father began to become more of a problem to the point where she had to move away and go live with her uncle. This is how Eleanor decided to deal with her situation, she tried to get help but she couldn’t get the help she needed to get the girls picking on her to stop. This is something many think will be the case if they try to get help so they do not end up telling anyone about what is going on to them, which can be very harmful. Speaking up takes a lot of courage and can be a difficult thing but more often than not, maybe not in Eleanor’s case, someone will be there that can help stop it.