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Kestrel For A Knave

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Society's Rejects and Barry Hines' "Kestrel for a Knave"

A kestrel for a knave is about a poor troubled Yorkshire lad by the name of Billy Casper. What he imagines to be out of reach and unbelievable are things we take for granted. He imagines love from his parents and just normal, every day things like fish and chips for supper and someone being nice to him. For Billy, that is a dream that will never become reality.

Treated as a failure at school and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can. I don’t think that Kes gives Billy the power to revolutionize and turn around …show more content…

This is a very big problem the world faces today as many people are judged by their wealth instead of who they really are. As there could be a very different person on the inside to what is shown on the outside. In the book after Billy meets with the milkman he takes a walk to a field overlooking a factory, which again is a reference to the working class background, that he lives in.

Many people influence Billy’s life from his family to his friends and to his teachers at school. His older brother bosses him about and they have no respect for each other. He expects Billy to be his personal slave and beats him up when he feels like it. For example when Billy doesn’t buy a betting ticket he goes round to his school and embarrasses him in front of all his school friends. His mum is to caught up in her boyfriends and her own life to take a minute and look at how her own sons are doing. This shows how people can influence you to do things and how important it is to have a stable family and how much it can affect you emotionally and mentally. People have the power to make you feel small, pathetic, useless and unwanted.

Billy has totally given up on school, as there is no hope for him. In one lesson however Mr. Farthing one of Billy’s teachers starts talking about fact and fiction. He then asks Billy for a fact about himself.
At first Billy claims “ I

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