Broken Lives

Broken Lives written by Estelle Blackburn is an expository text, which through research has presented that nineteen year old John Button was wrongfully convicted of killing his seventeen year old girlfriend Rosemary Anderson in a hit and run. I believe through my reading of Broken Lives that the key factor of expository texts is to explore awkward questions deeply and critically. In this case who was guilty of killing Rosemary Anderson in a hit and run, John Button or Eric Edgar Cooke, and the effect of Cooke's crimes and murders had on people.

John Button was a loving, caring, active and an innocent man. John's relationship with girlfriend Rosemary Anderson was strong. They planned

to get married and Rosemary's family accepted John for who he was and was already thinking of him as a son in law. "She was all he could think of: he was in love and was still consumed by the beautiful night at the Skyline Drive-in". John was caring and always thoughtful of other living things. "John was upset when he saw the first kangaroo die from Colin's shot... He was too soft hearted to shoot". As a child and teenager John loved to keep active by attending ballroom dancing which he was in love with. Button was innocent of killing Rosemary, but fierce police questioning and the police failing to investigate the case thoroughly lead to his imprisonment. There was little physical evidence to prove John's guilt. "... looking for blood, flesh or human hair which was likely if the car had hit a human being. There was none". Through John Button's representation of being a loving, caring, active man and through a flawed police investigation, Estelle Blackburn has convinced me as the reader of John Button's innocence of killing Rosemary Anderson.

Eric Cooke was traumatized by the abuse and rejection of his alcoholic father as a child. "Domestic violence was a way of life in the Cooke home. Eric was left alone and neglected because his father's loathing and abuse". Eric was born with deformities and considered himself as a freak, this being one of the reasons behind his hatred to everyone. Through the graphic detail of his nightly prowls and murders we not only dislike Cooke but also blame him for the murder of Rosemary Anderson. "He raised the hatchet and brought it down with all his strength... He raised the hatchet again and chopped into Brewer ferociously, twelve to thirteen times". Cooke confessed to killing

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