“Trash”by Andy Mulligan

Describe the qualities of each character and how their friendship helped them overcome their hardships. Trash (2010), a novel by Andy Mulligan, ends with the protagonists Raphael, Gardo and Rat starting their new life together. In the course of the novel, they faced many challenges and their friendships grows. Each character has qualities which helped build this friendship. Raphael shows the qualities of friendliness, kindness, caring and selfless. Gardo shows the qualities of empathy, cleverness and leadership. Rat shows the qualities of trustfulness, sneakiness and thoughtful. The boy’s friendship holds the key to their survival, helping them to leave the dumpsite and find a better life.

Raphael’s key qualities are friendliness, selfless and clever. Raphael shows the quality of friendly in the scene where he listen to Rat when nobody knows what he is doing. A quote which gives evidence of this quality is “and I’d listen to his chit chat singing” (Mulligan,2011, p.23). Another important quality that Raphael shows is selfless. He demonstrates this quality in the scene where he wants to give Rat some food for him to eat. A quote which gives evidence of this quality is “I thought, I should have brought him a bit of food” (Mulligan, 2011, pg.22). Finally, Raphael’s quality of clever is shown in the scene where he trying to figure out the code for the words. A quote which gives evidence of this quality is “ go to the map ref where we lay look for the brightest my child.” (Mulligan, 2011 , pg.152).