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Schule > Englisch > Characterisation of White Mike, Claude, Chris and Sara Ludlow: Twelve von Nick McDonell

Nick McDonell, Twelve - Characterization

The following characters are taken from Nick McDonells roman Twelve:
- White Mike
- Sara Ludlow
- Claude
- Chris

It was my exercise to characterize them.

White Mike is a thin young man. He is seventeen years old and has a pale skin. He wears jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and a dark blue
designer-overcoat. He looks like James Dean, very good, very cool. His hair is very short and very bright, nearly blond. He has scars on his face because he had acne in age of 15. White Mikes mother died some years before of cancer before he went to New York.
Now he is living there with his father in a big freehold flat. He helps his father by managing fast-food-restaurants, but this is only the official version, in reality he deals with drugs, weed, marihuana, coke and Twelve, this new designer drug.
His dealing-career started out a one-shot deal with his cousin Charlie (p. 5; l. 7-8). Charlie was shot by Lionel, a boy White Mike deals with to get the Twelve but White Mike doesnt know it. Even though he never had taken drugs before, hes a successful drug dealer. He even never had a cigarette or a beer before. I think he dont want to take drugs because he likes to be sober around people who are sick of the drugs they took. He likes to be stronger than them in a psychological way. I just never had the urge to (p. 74; l. 11)
White Mikes mother died three and a half years before of breast cancer before he went to New York.

Now he is living there with his father, whos never at home, in a big freehold flat. He helps his father by managing fast-food-restaurants, but this is only the official version, in reality he deals with drugs, weed, marihuana, coke and Twelve, this new designer drug.
He was a good student until he has been out of school for about six months. But no one cares about what hes doing and I think he likes the way it is so he can live his life on his on way.

He sells the drugs to all the rich kids in New York.
They want to have fun. And White Mike sells them fun.
I am the party!
He earns a lot of money with dealing. Often he sells drugs for a thousand dollars.
I think White Mike pays attention to his environment because he is interested in things happening around him. He counts things he passes, Five blocks, four West Indian woman pushing strollers [] to kids in polo shirts on skateboards [] so far. (p. 142; l. 18-24)
He even helps a man who, obviously needs help, because he injures himself with banging his head against a wall.

White Mike likes to walk around for hours. He walks to the beach, to arcades, through parks and on 5th Avenue, he always liked.
I think he walks crosswise through the city to escape from his daily routine. He just wants to get off for some minutes until his beeper starts vibrating again when somebody, somewhere needs drugs. When he walks down the 5th Avenue he looks at the people at sees that they look at him. He feels very important and that makes him moving in a better way.

Sara Ludlow wants to be the same as her grandmother was, a star because she had once a big party at Long Island and was at the front-page of a popular magazine. Sara wants to be famous, too.
She is a beauty. And she knows that. Everybody, even people who dont like her, said that she is beautiful. Sara is very superficial. She only wears expensive clothes, designer-bags The main thing is that everybody has to see that she is rich and she has influence.
Shes only interested in people of high standing. She doesnt care much for feelings of other people. She has many boy-friends, [] different guys are interesting for different reasons. (p. 65; l. 15-16)
If she wants something, she uses the others to get it.
She considers all the other people as tools for her career of getting famous. Sara plays with her sexy charisma. She uses her body to succeed. If she wants something, like money for drugs, she kisses the person, in case its a boy. Sometimes she promises to give blowjobs. It doesnt matter for her if she gets what she wants.

Claude is Chris brother. He became a weapon-fool after he stopped taking coke. Claude took a lot of coke. And I think the coke changed him. Now he collects weapons. Pistols, Samurai-swords, submachine guns, throwing-stars and something like that. He buys all the things in a little shop in Chinatown.
He is very aggressive and has no problems to kill a person. Sure, Id have shot the bitch. Shoot any bitch-ass nigger fucks with me. Teacher, cop, punk kid, doesnt matter to me. All the same anyway. (p. 68; l. 3-5)
He also wants everybody to know who he is and that he doesnt care about other peoples life.
He looks like Bruce Willis so he behaves like him.
Already in his childhood Claude was very touchy. When he and Chris wanted to build a model-plane and made a mistake he flipped out and smashed it against the wall. Nothing ever works. (p.102; l. 24)
Claude runs amok at Chris New-Year-Party.

In my opinion he did it just to know how it is to kill somebody or better, to kill a lot of people. He wanted to be the strongest, he wanted to be unbeatable, even though for a short moment.
He doesnt care about who he shoots down. Claude even tries to shoot his friend Tobias when he tries to abscond of Claudes shots.
In his destructive frenzy
Chris is the opposite of Claude. He never had taken coke. He just smokes weed and Marihuana.

Chris is a thin boy. He has rich parents.
He has bad acne, also on his chest and on his back. He is a virgin.
He never had a girl before, so hes happy every time a girl just calls him.
So it wasnt that difficult for Sara to convince him of making a New-Year-Party at his house. She makes suggestions to him he cant decline.
Chris isnt very muscular so the clothes he wears are quite sleazy.
Like White Mike he is very pale. He isnt very self-confident.
There is nothing he is very good in. He isnt very strong, he doesnt look good, and he has no influence. He has only rich parents like all the other kids he has to do with.
Nobody says: Hey there is Chris!

At his New-Year-Party only a couple of people knew that it was Chris party. Most of the guest had heard of this party from a person whos friend was invited or something like that. All people knew that it was Sara who afforded this party but no one knew that it was Chris house.

Those teens in "Twelve" are either very happy or very hopeless. They are all rich, in the upper-class, so money is only a little factor in their life, they want to have fun. Their parents live their own lives, often alcoholics like Hunter's father or never at home like White Mike's father. Everybody lives his own life, with a lot trouble but nobody is there for help.

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