Black Swan Green

With school children there is always some “hip” group or club to be apart of. However, these groups are usually just fads and true friendship lasts much longer. Such is the case with Jason Taylor and Dean Moran. Their friendship is stronger than the interest and excitement of being a member of the secret “Spooks”. “By the time you’re thirteen gangs’re babyish, like dens or legos. But spooks is a more secret society. Dean Moran’s dad said spooks started years ago as a kind of secret union for farmhands. If a landowner didn’t pay what he owed, say, the Spooks’d all go round to get justice.

Half the men in Black Swan’d’ve been members in those days.”…..pg 126. Jason is showing here with this quote his awe of the Spooks. Jason is also telling how the Spooks have been around for a long while: even though they are only appealing now to teenagers, mostly boys. Furthermore, the idea of the Spooks and the novelty that they hold doesn’t begin to describe the bonds of true friendship. “So here I am, two doubled back minutes later, eye to eye with Mr. Blake’s door knocker, cacking myself. Mr. Blake is shouting inside the house. He’s shouting inside the house. He’s not bollocking Moran. He’s on the phone, shouting about an ambulance. /this is just the beginning. I realize something about all the suicides traipsing north, north to a nowhere place where the highlands melt into the sea.”…..pg 141, Jason has finally accomplished a teenage boy’s dream; he has become a member of the Spooks. He does this passing his test with literally seconds to spare. However, Dean Moran, his buddy is not as lucky. He consequently falls through a green house window.

Jason being instructed not to go help his best friend is in a great dilemma. He doesn’t quite know what to do. Jason wants to be a member of the Spooks, he wants to be with the super cool kids. This desire though, was supposed to be shared with his best friend, Dean Moran. Dean has been there for Jason before he was even concerned about the Spooks. Jason knows what he has to do. He knows the right thing to do is go back to help his friend despite what will happen to his now “cool” status. Even though Jason has made up his mind what he is going to do, he is still having second thoughts as he is at Mr. Blake’s door. Jason’s true friendship with Dean Moran kills any ideas about going back to be a Spook and leaving his buddy out to dry. True friendship defeats the fab of the moment, the Spooks.