Michael Vey a Story in Which a Boy Turns the Tables on Bullies

Michael Vey: The Prisoner Cell

The book is Michael Vey: The Prisoner Cell 25, written by Richard Paul Evans. This is a science fiction story intended for young adults; the plot of this story involves Michael Vey, a teenage boy with Tourette's syndrome but gifted with electrical powers.

The electrical powers that Michael -- a fourteen-year-old high school student -- discovers within himself give him an extraordinary gift but these powers also cause Michael serious social / personal issues and cause intense scrutiny that plague him. A cheerleader named Taylor also has these electrical powers, and readers learn that both Michael and Taylor were born in the same hospital. In time, an evil group that wants to control Michael's and Taylor's powers and puts their evil plans to work, creating solid conflict in this book.

Thesis Statement

Adolescents anywhere in the world -- during their high school years -- universally can be cruel to fellow students that are a little different, a little strange, or nerdy, and this social reality in Michael's high school experience -- plus the fact that he was punished as the victim -- is a fortuitous (albeit sad) opening for the plot to develop. Readers of young adult stories come to expect that a family member in the life of the protagonist -- often the mother and father, or just the mother -- will back up the protagonist when things go bad, but Michael denied his mother that opportunity. Greed and evil are themes in fictional stories, but dark wickedness sometimes is presented in clinically understated narrative vis-a-vis Dr. Hatch and his nefarious colleagues at Elgen Academy.

Body of the Report

Cruelty happens to Tourette's-afflicted Michael in high school not just because bullies see a chance to ply their brutal trade on him but also when the punishment for an insidious act against him is visited upon him and not on the perpetrator. When Jack Vranes locked Michael in his locker for the second time in a month, and the custodian dragged him down to Mr. Dallstrom's office, Michael said: "It was the second time that month I'd been called to his office for something someone else did to me. Mr. Dallstrom was big on punishing the victim" (8). It was wholly outrageous to have been stuffed into his locker; but it was even more unconscionably cruel when the clueless principal dumps even more pain on Michael.

Notwithstanding all the unkind and nasty things that happened to Michael -- that most boys would quickly share detail-by-detail with their mothers -- he shows readers what a sensitive person he is by refusing to ask his mom to help bear his burden. Michael reflects back to the bullying he got in summer camp when kids surrounded him and said, "Let's see what the freak does next" (51); and these were bullies who did not know about Michael's electric powers. "Why didn't you tell me?" his mother asked, with tears in her eyes. And Michael's response shows readers how unselfish he is and how he wanted to protect his mom: "Because you have enough to worry about" (51). On page 20 Michael didn't want his mom to see his black eye, so when he heard her come home he " ... ran to my room, shut the door, turned out the lights, threw off my shirt, and crawled in bed" (20). Most kids would want their mothers to witness what a bully did to them, but Michael was a different breed of cat.

Taylor was brought to Elgen as though she was a most-wanted terrorist; the lab scene was hideously clinical and through the author's understated narrative, it smacked of a scene with James Bond about to be tortured. "The sign on the door said Exam Room B ... a tall woman with cropped yellow hair, thin-rimmed glasses ... wearing white lab coat looked up from her desk. 'This is Taylor Ridley?' she asked the man. 'Yes. Sign here,' he said, thrusting out a clipboard" (128). Thanks to the author's skill, Taylor transcended from an intelligent, worthy young woman into a piece of meat being delivered to a nefarious butcher.