Analysis Of A Child Called It By Dave Pelzer
“A Child Called ‘It’” is a non-fictional novel written by a survivor and activist of child abuse, Dave Pelzer. Among Pelzer’s many works of several autobiographies and self-help books, this novel is the most popular. “A Child Called ‘It’” was published in 1995 by ¬¬¬HCI and has won two literary awards: West Australian Young Readers' Book Award (WAYRBA) for Older Readers (2005), Abraham Lincoln Award (2005) (Good Reads). What makes people want to read “A Child Called ‘It’” is that it is a primary source to one of the most severe cases of child abuse in California (Google). This novel is the first installment of a trilogy that captures the different phases in Pelzer’s experience of abuse at four to twelve years of age. This part of the trilogy
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Everybody in his so-called family contributed to the suffering of his childhood, but the abuse was primarily from his violent mother. Catherine Roerva, the mother of Pelzer, suffered from depression and addiction to alcohol and drugs. This triggered the abuse towards “The Boy” or “It”, terms she would use to address her little son. Dave had five brothers and it is still unknown why his mother really singled him out and treated him and him alone in that manner. To Catherine, Dave was a bad boy who deserved everything he got from her. Her reasons for abusing him were that she was punishing him for being naughty and disobedient. Roerva’s treatment with Dave was full of some of the worst possible forms of abuse and torture, especially in a mother to son relationship. Other than good maternal treatment amongst many things, one of the greatest things Dave was deprived from was …show more content…
When his mother noticed that Dave was not struggling and begging for food, she knew something was not right since she had not fed him in days. She grabbed him, pulled his mouth open, and rammed her fist down his throat until he had no other choice but to voluntarily throw up in the bowl she had given him. If you thought that was bad enough, you thought wrong, because Mother forced him to eat was in the bowl in front of him. This was not even the first time he was forced to eat something that had already been eaten. He was forced to eat off the diaper of his baby brother. The threat from his mother and the starvation he was experiencing left him not choice but to obey her commands and eat the predigested
Everybody in his so-called family contributed to the suffering of his childhood, but the abuse was primarily from his violent mother. Catherine Roerva, the mother of Pelzer, suffered from depression and addiction to alcohol and drugs. This triggered the abuse towards “The Boy” or “It”, terms she would use to address her little son. Dave had five brothers and it is still unknown why his mother really singled him out and treated him and him alone in that manner. To Catherine, Dave was a bad boy who deserved everything he got from her. Her reasons for abusing him were that she was punishing him for being naughty and disobedient. Roerva’s treatment with Dave was full of some of the worst possible forms of abuse and torture, especially in a mother to son relationship. Other than good maternal treatment amongst many things, one of the greatest things Dave was deprived from was …show more content…
When his mother noticed that Dave was not struggling and begging for food, she knew something was not right since she had not fed him in days. She grabbed him, pulled his mouth open, and rammed her fist down his throat until he had no other choice but to voluntarily throw up in the bowl she had given him. If you thought that was bad enough, you thought wrong, because Mother forced him to eat was in the bowl in front of him. This was not even the first time he was forced to eat something that had already been eaten. He was forced to eat off the diaper of his baby brother. The threat from his mother and the starvation he was experiencing left him not choice but to obey her commands and eat the predigested