Teacher's Dead begins with the murder of Mr Joseph. He is stabbed by one of his students. The student, Lionel, and his friend, Ramzi, plead guilty very early in the novel. Thus, the plot itself is not so much about the murder, but rather about the experiences the first-person narrator Jackson makes as he tries to get to the bottom of this "case". The novel is the account of a schoolboy who is determined to reveal why his two fellow students killed his teacher.
Throughout the storyline there is a critique of the media coverage of the murder. In the newspapers and the TV news, the two boys are the bad guys and their families are to be blamed for them turning out to be such bad guys. Like the narrator, the two boys lived with their single mother. Jackson is angry about this over-simplification and traces the personal story of the two boys. What he finds is sadness. Soon, the school boy and the wife of his stabbed teacher become close friends. He calls it his "case" and reports his findings in a diary type of style to the reader. In the course of his investigations he has contact with two different gangs of teenage bullies. It turns out that one of these gangs is directly related to the murder of his teacher. Finally, Jackson even becomes friend with the mother of the murderer, who is a considered to be a witch by everybody else.
The story is told in surprisingly distant terms. The first person narrator considers his search for the truth as a kind of personal therapy. However, we do not get an inward perspective of himself or of any of the characters. We get an idea of how some of the person involved must feel - the mum of the murderer feels lonely and sad, for example. But the reader is given little else than the necessary hints to make her/ his own assumptions. The book was written for young adults. Consequently, the simple language is justified. The language is reduced to tell the important facts.
Benjamin Zephaniah likes documentaries and poetry. Both styles of narration are mixed in Teacher's Dead. What comes out is a detective story and an invitation to form one's own opinion. The first person narrator comes across several persons who are considered to have mental health problems and are let down by their neighbours and society. He approaches them without prejudice. A lot of his behaviour appears to be childlike naïve, but this serves to illustrate how painful prejudices can be for the concerned individuals.
The book speaks up against bullying, whether it might happen at school, in the neighbourhood or via the media. Furthermore, a central theme is the aptitude to forgive. Altogether, I enjoyed reading this book by Zephaniah just as I enjoyed reading Face and Gangsta Rap because it reminds us about important inter-human values in an unorthodox and mind sharpening manner. The language used could be a bit more sophisticated for my taste. However, because of its simplicity the novel will be understood by a large number of readers. Zephaniah is well aware that his audience does not only consist of people with a university degree, thus, his language serves his purpose as a poet who wishes to inform people about "the truth".
