A Rebel Life: Murder by the Rich

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Title** **A Rebel Life: Murder by the Rich**
First US edition cover - 2007
Author	Peter Kalafatis
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Memoir
Publisher	All and None Press
Released	January 2007
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	181 pp (first edition, paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0615135145 (first edition, paperback)

A Rebel Life: Murder by the rich by Peter Kalafatis, began as a letter from an older brother to his unborn baby that he purposefully brought into the world weeks after his little brother died of a drug overdose. This memoir is written as a novel, with straightforward language wrapped with philosophical undertones and a declarative manifesto roar of the true cause to one of the trappings kids of the working class fall into; drugs.

From the book

A Rebel Life is a brother's account of his psychotic break during the three days that lead him to his younger brother's funeral. His escalating anger and reasoning of how the rich are ultimately responsible for his brother's death fuel his psychosis and push him to act for revenge and justice. But on who, the entire wealthy class? And more importantly, how? Memories of a violent and rebellious past battle with the civilized man the older brother has become and eventually bring him to a life changing decision on what to do about his younger brother's murderers. This obsession forces him to deal with ideas of classism, personal responsibility, free will, middle-class apathy, herd morality, inequality, truth, drugs, violence, gangs, and propaganda.

1 Plot summary
2 Ideas from the book
- 2.1 The man in the black suit
3 Book quotes
4 Publication
5 External link

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story takes place from Peter, the older brother’s perspective, of the three days leading to his younger brother, Archie’s funeral. Memories of what directed him and his brother to their outcomes and dreams of what should have been interrupt the long three days. Peter’s guilt of leaving his brother in the streets finally snapped a long and delicate psychosis he had with blaming the rich for the problems of the world. Growing up punk rock in NYC during the late eighties, Peter had always seen the rich as manipulating and exploiting his kind, the working class, and also recognized them as the cause of his street life, no matter how many times his own kind tried to convince otherwise. He states in the book that enlightened people with real choices don’t “choose” to remain ignorant and exist meaningless attached to human qualities that resemble animals.

Peter’s anger toward a class of people that created the misery and hardships of his working class Brooklyn neighborhood sent him raging into the streets at sixteen. He watched his mother and father struggle to put food on the table by working tirelessly for bosses in restaurants that seen them as lower human beings. That work-shit-work existence bled the life out of his parents and the anger logically fell downward to their kids. They worked themselves mindlessly to gain some sort monitory pile that could make the family feel accomplished and significant. In doing so-it made the brothers feel fake – so they rebelled. They joined gangs. They found a true family with the angry hardcore music scene.

A Rebel Life Book Plate

Peter was on the streets at sixteen, tattooed from neck to fingers by eighteen, living in squats, uneducated, in gangs, and drunk most of the time. He searched for meaning to his life, by embracing the nihilistic thinking of the punk rockers and anarchists that littered the lower east side streets of Manhattan. At the end of a drug filled stupor and almost a decade of pain and violence, Peter was faced with the decision to leave the streets or die on them. Like the rest of his life of being forced into situations he had no control over, his environment pushed him out of the streets because as much as he tried, he wasn’t dying in them. The shootings, stabbings and overdoses were just aggravating the pain. Peter left his brother and friends behind and began to conform to a system he had sworn to be against.

After another ten years and an obsession of education to understand the cause of his working class existence, the world shifted again for Peter when his brother was found dead of a drug overdose. His conclusion that the corrupt and unfair system they were caught in from birth, was from the direct manipulation of a wealthy class to maintain their status. Peter has declared in his book that his brother was indirectly murdered because he went against this system. And since murderers need to be brought to justice, Peter’s dilemma is how to make this happen. At the moment of the news of his brother’s death, Peter’s mind split into two personalities; one, of an old violent way of needing revenge and the other of a new civilized approach. The book is a ride inside Peter’s mind as these two forces do battle.

This memoir is not only Peter’s experiences of a street gang, violent and drug filled life, but also a call to the only person he sees that can bring any meaningful justice for his brother’s murder. He doesn’t simply want blood for blood since this is another way to keep his kind ignorant and down. He wants the corrupt system to end. Peter’s revenge is raising a true rebel that will change the world once and for all.

[edit] Ideas from the book

[edit] The man in the black suit

In the beginning of the book Peter remembers when he was sixteen and witnessed his first violent act. Peter was to stand guard, as his best friend and others mugged and left the man in the black suit badly beaten. They thought they were mugging a rich man because of the suit he wore, but when they got his wallet and found ten dollars they realized they were wrong. The violence act sat hard on Peter's mind because he didn't do anything to stop his friends and he knew it was wrong to hurt someone. He rationalized it as he was living in the streets and he needed the support of his friends more then his morality.

The man in the black suit shows up three more times in the book in Peter's dreams. In the first dream (God's dream chapter), the man in the black suit appears as a dead God and blames Peter for his death. This has [Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzschian]] undertones of his death of God statement. In the second dream (dream of a ridiculous man chapter, the title is obviously taken from Dostoevsky), the man in the black suit appears as simultaneously a judge, prosecutor, and attorney in a court room where Peter attempts to plead his case to working class people, that the rich indirectly murdered his brother by manipulating the system. In the last dream (my brother's dream chapter) the man in the black suit appears as a rich man disguised as God and hands Peter the letters this book was written from to give to his brother's child in the dream. When Peter asks the rich man disguised as God where these letters came from, God replies that he has written them.

[edit] Book quotes

- "I knew shit floated downstream and in this river, I stood there at the end as a 13-year-old confused and saddened. Just waiting for that final fist full of a rich man’s regurgitated feces to be shoved into my face." p20

- "The streets simply spilled out their ignorance into our schools. These urban monuments with gray painted walls, underneath the graffiti voice of the streets, became our housing units and our conditioning centers." p33

- "My taste in music was off, my view of the world was off, my use of slang was off, and I was off. I stood out like a virgin in a whore house waiting to be fucked by the next pig that came through the door. Those kids at Columbine weren’t the first ones with those ideas because I played that scenario over in my head a million times; they were just pushed enough to actually do it." p35

- "HERE IN THE HALLOW DEPTHS OF MY MIND, manifestations form to further my insanity down a path lined with the blood of rebels. Sadness paralyzes me into an awakened comatose state. The worst day in my life ended and I prayed to my delusion to rest my heart from this deep anger that grips it." p45

“Maybe next time you should put some thought in your dreams, so they can make a little sense. We’re not all chairs you know. Some of us can think and see what’s going on.”

“You people killed me in my own dream and now I can’t wake up. More wine!” God shouted at the chair.

The server ran over and poured the wine into God’s glass. She stood by the table quietly ready to receive more orders.

“You don’t have to listen to him,” I said to her. She tilted her head in my direction, but her eyes remained staring at the floor. “God is dead. It’s now up to us and what we make of our own existence. We’re only chairs if we allow this dead relic to convince us of it.” p48

A Rebel Life Full Book Cover

- "Maybe, I needed to lay dormant like the other giants and sow the seeds for the complete destruction of this vampire class. Or, maybe, I needed immediate gratification by finding the richest neighborhood with some pig in the biggest house and lay my gun right down his throat. I’d tell him my compassion was left at my brother’s burial site as the trigger snapped." p73

- "With a kamikaze diving kick over my shoulder in an effort to help, Eric falls on a knife, stabbing into flesh on his right side about three inches deep, just missing his lung. He was a sturdy 19-year-old with beefy arms, but they couldn’t help him with a puncture in his side and with four raging dogs tearing at his skin. This wasn’t some scrap you have in high school, where you know someone in authority is eventually going to breakup your fist fight. This corner of Eighth Street and First was a roman arena, where slaves were fighting for their freedom. This shit was to the death and if I could only get this son-of-a-bitch’s throat in my hands, I’d snap it—right at the first sign of my emperor’s thumb moving downwards. Fighting to the death was what the rich wanted from us and we gave it cheerfully." p79

- "THE NIGHT BLANKETED MY NEIGHBORHOOD as I waited for my wife to fall asleep. There were some heavy thoughts laying on me these past two days. The memories of my past kept spiking into my head to preserve some old-school reputation. The ferocious thirst for revenge had me foaming at the mouth. I was truly on a fence and either direction would change my life forever. One side was sleep and the other was oblivion." p89

- "The rubber of the tires drove through streets where violence was not a stranger. Graffiti was painted on apartment doors and windows. Grown men who sat around tables playing dominoes lined the streets, while kids drinking 40-ounce bottles of beer pillared the corners. My brother built his reputation here fist by fist, like an animal fighting for scraps. He didn’t choose this way of life like some rich kid chooses his career. We were born for this game, not to run it, but to work for it." p99

“What’s up, bro?” He said and my arms opened up and engulfed my little brother. I felt complete and finally at peace. We were angled so I could see the man in the black suit staring at us from the treetop. I looked away.

I pulled away from my brother and I held his head in my hands in front of me. I could see the reflection of my face in his eyes. I saw anger and guilt and love.

“I got a gun,” I said to him in a low voice so he could only hear me. “I’m going to fucking kill them.”

“This is not the time—this is my dream,” he said.

“Your dream?” I asked puzzled.

“I’ll be right back,” Archie said to his family. “Come on Pete; let’s walk.” p106

- "This work-shit-work existence was ridiculous, but when these words came out of us, we were simply labeled as lazy. It’s a rich man’s label, for a rich man’s livestock and the worst part was, it was being propagated by our own kind." 109

- "At 21 years-old, my brother was shorter and thinner than I was. He kept his hair cropped short and you could see a line in the shape of a “U” on the left side of his head, where they put a steel plate in the place of his crushed skull. He loved to show it off as a badge of honor and a shield of protection." p110

- "Life is Hardcore and dead to right on these blood filled streets that keep pouring into treacherous nights, where any moment your friend could turn on you at the first sign of weakness. What to do to prove you’re in it for life when your investment has brought you so deep into the shit, that there is no turning back? Death or prison was my only logical outcome. I’m going to fight my way out as I fought my way in, but this time, it won’t be my old man. It’ll be those mother fuckers who are keeping me stupid. But first, I needed to worry about this gang war brewing." p120

Pyramid of Capitalist System

“He didn’t want to fucking die!” I said, barreling into the kitchen. “I’m hearing all this shit. He died of a heroin overdose. If any meaning is ever going to come from his life, it is going to be the truth. First, take responsibility and acknowledge what happened and then don’t repeat it. He died of a drug overdose and it wasn’t his fucking fault. We don’t have to hide from that, unless we really did it to him.”

“Enough,” my father said to me in Greek.

“What the hell is this shit? We even blame ourselves, for them, when they fucking kill us. What are we sheep that they can slaughter? All they have to do is just make it seem like we wanted it?” I said angrily. p134

- "The black blotches that formed into letters and read, “hard-core,” on my fingers caught the eye of the woman sitting opposite me. Her lips were unnaturally big and so were her breasts. Her look of disgust was normal as her eyes went from my fingers to the tattoos on my neck. The rock on her finger and the gold around her neck made me respond in kind. I’m trying to look hard and you’re trying to look rich; were both fucking idiots, but the difference is that I know it." 151

- "Our people are inherently frightened by meaningless violence and it is just another way for them to embrace their herd mind. We need to kill our silent oppressors, logically. Conform and move through their ranks. Be a shadow of your ideals, but DO NOT COMPROMISE THEM. Without them, you are a zombie." 178