Conflict changes us? But how?

    Ups and downs in the novel make the main character of this story, Tyler Miller change a lot. At first he starts to change physically, but he knows that despite of his physical appearance deep inside he is still a 'loser'. When Bethany Mulberry and Tyler start to 'talk' things twist up much more than what Tyler's life already is, his enemies now have something else against him specifically Chip because the looser he detests is now talking to his sister. When Miller starts to dress differently just to make the girl he likes happy and fit in, he compares himself to the other guys something he didn't do before. In a paragraph he even says "If you lined me up with the other guys, you'd start singing 'One of these things is not like the others' From Sesame Street the other guys, they all blurrred into each other: rich, smart, athletic, and popular. Me, I stood out, the semi- bad boy guaranteed to bring some spice into her life." (Anderson 108). He starts to kind-of compete with the jocks for Bethany. He trys to stick up for himself a little more, and for a while isn't bullied as much as he use to be. This is when Tyler starts to change and his self esteem finally starts rising a bit and kicks everything to the curve, Tyler realizes the reality and even says it to himself like in this quote, " Of course, there was always the chance that she was totallly setting meup for major humiliation or that this was all mercy-flirting -But, honestly? I didn't care" (Anderson 108).

   Throughout the whole story Tyler Miller thinks a lot about death. He is really into a video game called Tophet, its about killing, good and evil. "Thinking about death relaxed me" (Anderson 44) When more conflicts rise towards the end of the story he starts to think about suicide. " You can't kill yourself you have to run away." ( Anderson198) He takes out his father's gun and attempts to plan his death. He wanted to do it nicely without leaving a mess for his family to see. Tyler wanted this to atleast be the only thing he did right, other than digging holes in the ground and messing his life up. He knows he has ruined a lot of things in his and his family's lives so he doesn't think he deserves to be living anymore. 'Homo, Fuge' (Anderson 212) Tyler wasn't able to do it, he throws up and rinses his mouth. What once made him relaxed now churned his stomach and made him nervous, maybe after all death nor evil was so much what he thought. Instead Tyler moved on into the the light " I chose wisely" (Anderson 250)