Scared by Anthony Horowitz| Detailed Analysis | Grade 11

Gary Wilson is a rude, aggressive and selfish teenager from London. He bullies
children at school and disrespects his mother. His mother takes him to visit his
grandmother in a village in Suffolk for a week. He hates being there. He is bored and
one day he decides to go for a walk. In his walk, he breaks all the rules that he is
supposed to follow. He walks through the fields instead of sticking to the footpaths. He
picks wild flowers and tears them up; he leaves gates open, hoping that the farmers’
animals will run away; he throws his Coke can into a field; he breaks the branch of an
apple tree; and he leaves his lit cigarette butt in the grass, which could cause a fire.
He gets lost and bad things start to happen to him. His feet get wet. He sprains his
ankle. When he turns around, the landscape has changed, and he cannot find his way
home. In a small forest, he scratches his shoulder and cuts his leg. He tears his jacket.
He falls into a stream. He gets stung by nettles and by a wasp. It seems as if nature
is attacking him as revenge for his terrible treatment of it. Eventually, he sees his grandmother’s house. He gets halfway across the field. He
feels hot and tired. He decides to rest and holds onto a pole in the middle of the field.
He magically turns into a scarecrow. When he does not come home that evening, his
mother calls the police. They searched for him for five days. None of them realise that
he is the scarecrow in the field next to his grandmother’s cottage. His mother decides
to go back to London. As she leaves, she notices the scarecrow in the field. She
realises that it looks like Gary.
However, she decides not to look at it more closely. We realise that she is relieved not
to have Gary in her life anymore.
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