There are three types of people who find him, but only one of them realizes that Andy needs help. The first one is a drunken man who does not realize that Andy is injured badly. He thinks Andy is drunk, too, and so he leaves him lying there. The third person is an old woman who cannot hear very well and does not notice Andy at all. She is looking for something in the garbage cans and so it can be assumed that she is poor, may be even homeless. She leaves without seeing Andy lying there. These persons stand for the group of people who need help like Andy. They cannot help Andy because they are needy themselves.
But the second person who comes along the road is a boy with his girlfriend. The author even mentions their names. So the young couple is not anonymous like the first and the third person. Freddie – the boy – finds Andy and also sees that he is injured, that he needs help. But his girlfriend Angela is afraid because they notice Andy’s jacket with the name of his gang on it. So the couple knows that he belongs to that gang. They decide not to help him. The young couple is most important for Andy’s development. As he sees the couple he thinks of his own girlfriend Laura and then – when he sees them kissing – he wonders if he would ever be able to kiss Laura again. That is when he realizes that he is going to die. And it is also the couple´s fear which shows him that there is not only his gang and another gang, but people who are generally afraid of gangs. They do not want to be involved in their violence. And so he wonders about his own role in the gang and in society. He thinks that he is just an anonymous member of any gang and that he wants to be appreciated as an individual. In the end Andy takes off his jacket with the name on it because he does not want to remain an unknown member. He wants to be Andy and he wants the other people to know that. Getting out of his jacket seems to be like the liberation from the gang. His girlfriend Laura finds him dead and fetches a policeman but as he sees the jacket with the title The Royals on it the boy seems just one more victim of gang warfare for which he has no sympathy. (C.H., 11c, March 2009)

The pride of a Royal turns into remorse

The text “On the Sidewalk Bleeding” by Evan Hunter is about a 16-year-old boy called Andy who is a member of the “Royals” and is stabbed by a “Guardian”. Injured, he is lying on the sidewalk and waiting for someone passing to help him. But on this rainy day not many people are passing him. He is very unlucky because nobody wants to help him or does not want to get mixed up in the conflict between the “Royals” and the “Guardians”. The help of his girlfriend Laura comes too late. He is already dead when she arrives.

The whole story is written in the 3^rd person, but even if a narrator always is more distant to the events than the person speaking himself in the 1^st person, he makes the reader feel sorry for Andy as he feels directly involved and partly personifies with Andy.

Evan Hunter mentions directly at the beginning that Andy is going to die. Therefore the reader knows more than Andy does because he thinks he “can’t be dying, not from a street rumble, not from just getting cut.” But his thoughts are changing through the whole story. First he just thinks about his future together with Laura because he does not realise that he could die if nobody is helping him. After the first pedestrian – a drunken person who does not notice Andy’s injury – Andy thinks more and more about Laura, because he knows that Laura, of course, would help him immediately. While a couple who could have helped him, comes along he is jealous because he sees them kissing and therefore he “suddenly hungered for Laura’s mouth.” The word “Love”, said by the couple, causes Andy’s drastic change in thoughts. He suddenly thinks that he is going to die but still in combination with thinking about Laura.

The couple does not help him because they “don’t want to get mixed up in this”. Andy’s reaction to this is clear: He cannot understand why they are afraid. He himself was not afraid of the Guardians and “never turkeyed out of a rumble with the Guardians.”

After the frightened couple Andy begins to think about his life, what he has done and what he could do in the future if he was not dying. His conclusion is that he has not “lived yet.”

This makes the reader very sad even if he knows right from the beginning that this would happen. But the way Andy’s emotional thoughts are presented is very decisive for the reader´s sympathy. They are very emotional.

Andy begins to think about his life just because he is dying. That emphasises that he does not want to die. He was so full of pride when he became a “Royal” but he knows that this is the reason why he is dying now. Not he himself as Andy is dying. No, anyone of the “Royals” is dying. It is just the fact that each gang wants to wipe out the other one. But they not necessarily know who they are stabbing. It is amazing how people can just kill. How can there be so much hate?

This makes Andy sad because he will not see Laura again. It is just the jacket he wore lettered with “Royal”. In the end he sincerely wants to get rid of this jacket. He knows that this is the purpose for everything which has happened: First of all that he was stabbed at all. And secondly that the couple did not want to help him. Finally it is clear for him that “the jacket was a stupid meaningless thing that was robbing him of his life.”

Evan Hunter combines stories of possible helpers with all the different thoughts of Andy in the whole story. Therefore the reader can detect the change in Andy and feels that he would have to help Andy if he could because nobody else wants to do it.

I think that Evan Hunter wants to express that you have to think about your life while you are living because when you are nearly dead it is too late. You should always be aware of the things you are doing. Another thing he wants to convey is that everybody is just thinking about himself. People do not want to help others if they might be in danger then. I think people should try to live more with each other and not alongside each other. Then Andy would not have had to die as young as he was. (F.S., 11c, March 2009)

A Royal is stabbed and dies being Andy

In the story a 16-year-old boy named Andy is lying on the sidewalk bleeding. He got stabbed, probably by some member of another gang than the one Andy is in (‘THE ROYALS’), and is now injured really badly. Every now and then people are walking down the alley. There is a drunken man who is the first one to notice Andy at all. But Andy can neither move nor speak; therefore he is not able to accept the man’s offer to call the police for help. So the drunkard just walks off, leaving Andy behind in the cold and rain, almost dying. Then a couple, Freddie and his girlfriend Angela, appears. Unsure what to do, Freddie decides to check whether Andy’s all right. As he sees the emblem “THE ROYALS” on the jacket though, he turns away from him and tells Angela to leave, although she is hesitating.
While Andy is getting more and more desperate, an old woman suddenly approaches. But she is deaf and does not pay attention to anyone else than herself, so she cannot hear the noise Andy is making to draw her attention. She passes by without even noticing him.
Realizing he is about to die, Andy succeeds in getting his jacket off, because he does not want to belong to THE ROYALS anymore. A little later Laura, Andy’s girlfriend, finds him dead on the sidewalk. Shocked she fetches a policeman who insists on calling Andy a ‘Royal’, whereas Laura wants to speak well of him by calling him a normal boy named Andy.

All over the text there are passages where you can see into Andy’s mind and share his thoughts. At the beginning he does not really think the fight was a bad thing to happen, because he is proud to be a member of the gang ‘The Royals’. He is optimistic, as he believes someone will come and help him. At this point of the story, he does not notice yet that he is actually dying.
Quite often he thinks of his girlfriend Laura and wants her to be at his side. Towards the end this wish increases more and more, when he realizes that his life will soon come to an end.
His efforts to make the people who are walking down the alley hear or see him get more determined as well. The desperation is nearly overwhelming him. He thinks about his time as a Royal and the persistent fight between Royals and Guardians. This is when he understands that being a member of either gang is not as good as he always thought. That is why his last thing he is determined to do is getting off his jacket. He does not want to be found as a Royal, he wants to die as Andy.