Boot Camp

Boot Camp (2007), a young adult fiction novel by Todd Strasser, follows `Garrett, who endures emotional and physical abuse when his parents send him to a boot camp to correct his erratic behavior at home and school. Based on real accounts of life at boot camps in the United States that function as prisons rather than centers for rehabilitation or enrichment, the novel illuminates many of the system’s moral ills using the fictional account of a boy who suffers through its systematic but legal abuse.

The novel begins by contextualizing Garrett’s life and relationship with his family. Constantly truant, Garrett makes it to school only a couple of times a week. He fares no better with his parents, having stolen money from them time and time again. Making things worse, he has begun a romantic relationship with his former teacher. Garrett has a distorted view of his behavior, believing that it is all justifiable and merely a matter of personal opinion on how one should live his life.

One night, Garrett’s parents arrange to have him taken from home and sent to a boot camp in New York. The scene is more akin to a kidnapping than an arrest. When he arrives at the camp, he is thrown in a cell-like room where he has to remain standing for many hours. Eventually, an officer comes with a new set of clothes for him to put on. The camp officials do not value his dignity, forcing him to strip in front of them and be searched. After the violating search, they tell him to put on the uniform. He manages to sleep for a moment and is then put in front of the warden of the boot camp, who gives him a long list of rules. Garrett surprises the staff by quickly passing the rules test despite barely looking at the list. He is placed in a group of other “campers” that vaguely models a family unit.



Garrett quickly learns that it will be difficult to live in his new environment. His family group’s “father,” a more senior camper, constantly antagonizes him during the first couple of months. When Garrett retaliates, he is relegated to TI, short for temporary isolation. Each time he goes to TI, he is forced to sleep on a concrete floor for over a week. Because of his suffering, Garrett manages to sympathize with the other campers—namely a younger camper, Paul, whom he befriends after rescuing him from a group of bullies. The act of goodwill gets Garrett sent back to TI for disorderly conduct.

Garrett slowly becomes lonely, wishing to see his parents again. He holds out hope that they will realize their wrongdoing and come to take him back. When his father comes to the boot camp to visit, Joe, the leader of Garrett’s family group, modifies the appearance of the camp to look fun and carefree. He even opens up a disused gym and television room that the campers are never actually permitted to use. By the time he leaves, Garrett’s dad is convinced that the camp is good for him, causing Garrett to despair.

One day, Paul comes to Garrett with an escape strategy. Garrett, terrified of the consequences of getting caught trying to escape, initially rejects the notion. Not long after, however, Garrett is ambushed and beaten in the bathroom by members of his “family.” He realizes that he must either turn Paul in or aid in the escape effort. Garrett and Paul team up with a camper named Sarah to start a fire as a diversion that results in the arrival of firefighters. They escape when the guards are distracted. Joe runs out after them, trying to restrain them, and Garrett has a moment of rage when he wants to hurt Joe. Paul calms him down, recommending that they incapacitate Joe using duct tape.



On their first day on the run from the camp, Garrett, Paul, and Sarah hop into a pickup truck to hitchhike. They then switch to a semi truck, which happens to pull over at a truck stop where the same kidnappers that took Garrett from his home are hanging out. He realizes that they are searching for them, so they resolve to travel by foot rather than risk being tracked in a vehicle. Eventually, the trio reaches the Canadian border. Paul has grown ill and possibly, Sarah has a broken foot. They try to cross without identifying themselves, and Garrett runs into another one of the kidnappers in a truck storage yard. Garrett runs away and finds a boat that they try to use to cross. The bounty hunters chase them in a boat, not knowing that Garrett preemptively made it unusable. It sinks as Sarah and Paul cross the border. As the men are about to drown, Garrett goes back and rescues them.

Garrett’s kindness is not rewarded; instead, he is taken back to the camp and tortured. He undergoes a psychological breakdown and begins to accept, even love, the rules of the camp. Eventually, one of the bounty hunters tells his parents about the true conditions of the camp. They rush to the camp with a lawyer, but are too late: Garrett is nearly catatonic and suffering from PTSD. He is unable to give a clear account of what happened, telling his parents that he deserved his torture. Boot Camp thus portrays the incarceration of children with behavioral issues as an opportunity for people with even worse morals to perpetuate and normalize human rights crimes.