Merlin VanTornhout, a young man of eighteen in the book Witness, by Karen Hesse, is already racist and prejudice before the Ku Klux Klan arrives in a small Vermont town in 1924. Merlin is just a lonely teenager who lacks self-confidence and is trying to find himself, which lead him to be involved with the Klan, yet his sense of morality leads him to leave the Klan and look at all people as human beings. He looks down at anyone who is not a WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) in an attempt to atone for his lack of self-confidence and lack of feeling of self-worth. He is still a kid who has yet to find himself. Merlin is not the purely evil and insane person you think of when you think of someone who is racist and who would join the Klan. You can see that he has a good...