Jake Drake, Bully Buster

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying.

Jake Drake, Bully Buster shows that individuals can make a difference in their own experiences with bullying—but it also makes clear that bullying is a systemic problem that children should not be left to fight against on their own. The novel’s protagonist is an ordinary and relatable child—he is not the smartest, strongest, or most talented child in his school, he has flaws and vulnerabilities like most children, and his narrative voice is constructed to be friendly and amusing but in no way exceptional. In Chapter 1, Jake explains that he has been bullied for years, by various people. The bullying behaviors he has had to contend with are relatively mild—having a cookie stolen, a LEGO construction demolished, or his lunch squished, for example. Jake is not talking about extreme persecution; he is talking about the ordinary small aggressions many children experience. Jake’s theory about which kids get picked on by bullies also emphasizes the ordinary: He claims that bullying happens to those who are neither too big nor too small, who don’t have an older sibling in the same school, who are not tattletales, and who seem smart enough to make bullies feel inferior. These descriptors, of course, fit many—if not most—children. Because Jake represents the average child, his experience with bullies seems applicable to the average child.

Over the years, Jake has learned lessons about dealing with bullies that, from his position of relative experience and wisdom in the fourth grade, he now wants to pass on. He shares the rules he has developed, like “Never try to tell [a bully] why he’s wrong” (8), and “if you tattle to the teacher, things might get a lot worse” (18). He feels that he learned the most important lesson about how to defeat a bully when he was in second grade, so he tells the story of meeting Link Baxter, a “SuperBully,” in detail (18). From his encounters with Link, he learns several key things about a bully’s motivations. He learns that bullies are often people who have experienced bullying themselves, and that bullying can be a mask they wear to hide their own vulnerabilities. He learns that bullies can be motivated by someone else’s fear and inability to see them as real people. Jake shows how these lessons can be applied when he stands up to Link, gets to know him as a person, and shows him compassion. This brings Link’s bullying of Jake to an end, demonstrating that individuals can make choices that diminish the power of bullies in their lives.

Significantly, though, Link continues bullying others. Jake also points out, in the end of the story, that there are still other bullies in his school, and he still has to work to overcome each one individually. He has developed the power to deal effectively with bullying on the personal level, but he has no power to eradicate bullying on a larger scale. Jake Drake, Bully Buster is also an examination of this larger scale: The novel shows how pervasive the problem of bullying really is and asks critical questions about the role adults play in perpetuating the problem. Throughout the story, Link’s bullying is not only tolerated by other students, it is actively encouraged. When Link makes fun of Jake’s name on the bus, the other students laugh at Jake. When Link throws water on Jake’s pants, the other students in the bathroom laugh, and in Jake’s classroom, everyone stares at him. These, too, are bullying behaviors.

Worse, adults in the story consistently fail to investigate and intervene. When Jake messes up five attempts at his handwriting practice, Mrs. Brattle does not ask why—she simply scolds him about being more careful. When Link tries to bump Jake on the slide, Mrs. Brattle is standing nearby, but she does not seem to notice. When Jake comes back into Mrs. Brattle’s room with water on his pants, Mrs. Brattle does not stop Link from whispering his lies about Jake to other students, and she does not correct her class for staring at Jake. When Jake asks not to be partnered with Link on the social studies assignment, Mrs. Brattle dismisses his concerns without asking meaningful questions about what is happening between the two boys. Although the novel suggests that individual children can take action to help themselves when they are being bullied, it also suggests that adults often do not do enough to eliminate the wider problem of bullying in schools.