The autobiography of Dave Pelzer‘s life highlights issues concerning the youth. His novels, A Child Called “It” and The Lost Boy demonstrated the first awareness of abuse and mistreatment in the homes of blood related families and many other homes. Pelzer‘s story is not the first of many stories to depict a child trying to survive in a home where there is many afflicted injuries. These injuries can be classified into three categories: physical, emotional and mental. The work of Pelzer suggest that the nature of life consist of trials and tribulations and it is the responsibility of the individual to be resilient to every test.…
Tobias Wolff’s highly accredited novel, ‘ This Boys Life’ explores truth and lies through the use of various scenarios and characters in a cliché “American dream” teenage world.…
Dave was a skinny, malnourished, and weak boy that was brutally beaten, starved, and mistreated by his mother. He has short blonde hair and soft light blue eyes. Many times he came to school with bruises and and scratches all of his body covered up only by his old, unwashed, smelly clothes. He has light skin covered with many scars as well.…
In California in 1973, Dave's life story was identified as one of the most gruesome and extreme cases of child abuse in then history. Dave had stated in his book, A Child Called "It" that "his mother would punish him, for "Mouthing Off" by making her special batch of ammonia and Clorox and locking him in the bathroom." ( Pelzer, 1995, p. 142). At the age of 12 he was finally rescued and in and out a series of foster homes. Then at the age of 18, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force.…
Young people are most often guided by their parents and guardians of what they should or shouldn’t do. However, some unfortunate ones are left alone to find their own paths. In their search of making their own destiny; some young people choose to fight against all obstacles to reach goals that will lead to a successful fortune, while some will walk an uneasy way and repeat themselves in the misery of self-destructiveness and self-sabotaging behaviors. In Tobias Wolff’s memoir This Boy’s Life, the author presents a life that is built up on continuous self-destructive decisions; making himself his own worst enemy and causing all kinds of pitiful situations which he hopes to change and evolve into a better self, only to once again find him fallen into the very trap set up by no one but himself.…
The way Pelzer writes made the novel easy to read and understand. However, his horrific story about his alcoholic mother made it extremely difficult to understand how an human being can be so cruel. Pelzer did an excellent job at expressing his feelings. As I was reading I felt like I was him. I felt his gradual hate for his brothers and his father. His father started off as the boy’s hero. But, Pelzer’s father neglected to do anything about his situation. Just like the author felt, I felt like his father was just as bad as his mother because he let it happen. The raw emotions Pelzer shares is one of the reasons this is such a great novel. Pelzer was honest about his jealously and dislike towards his brothers because not only did they let the torture happen, eventually they got in on it. The brothers also treated the unloved boy as an “it.” The brothers would bring their friends into the bathroom to laugh at the boy while he was submerged into the freezing cold…
To say that the Stephen King novel “IT” is simply a horror novel about a monster is to say that Alan Paton’s “Cry, The Beloved Country” is just a novel about a man losing his son. There is much more to it than that. Published by American writer Stephen King in September of 1986, “IT” is a known suspenseful, horror story that not only pulls back the vivid memories of your childhood fears, but makes you relive them as well. Taking place in Derry, Maine between the years of 1957 through 1985, “IT” is an outstanding novel with so much to offer to any reader willing to embark on a chilling adventure this novel offers.…
David is an immature person. After his father moved away, he was so angry that he refused to talk to his dad and even burnt all the letters from his father. He thinks that he is as same as his neighbour's dog, Monty, a victim of neglect. He even stopped working and got low marks at…
Many times when people are Isolated, they begin to feel resentment towards others. In the book A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer, he talks about his experience of growing up with an abusive parent. His relationship with his family was normal and loving up until around first grade. He began noticing his mother’s attitude changing towards him in a very negative way. It started with small punishments, and ranged to beating, and little “games”, as Dave Pelzer would call it. Throughout the book, he places emphasis on many specific instances, and his fight for survival while growing up. He also places a major emphasis on his Mother, the abuser, and his father, the stand-by (Pelzer 1-72). There are many times throughout his book where…
Every child has issues rather they be big or small or in between but it’s how we as parents and authorities deal with them that makes an impact on them. The discipline and love we show them is what will help them in the long run become who they are meant to be. Its very important we educate ourselves in discipline and love so not only our children but anyones children that we are around can benefit from it. In the book One Child by Torey Hayden we meet a young child of six years old named Shelia.…
The main characters were the mother, Dave, the father and the teachers who helped him get out of this trap. The mother was the meanest out of all of them she was the main culprit. The rest were quite serious. The mother and Dave were described in details and there were only a few details about the father and the teachers. The found Dave the most interesting, most sympathetic character as he went through so much no one could bear so much. There were a lot of conflicts going on as Dave's mother was fighting with his father and Dave fighting for justice there is a relationship between the father and the son but Dave's mother keeps coming in between.…
One child, of unspecified gender, is forced to live underneath a city building or a large home. In this room, the only light comes in through the cracked boards. There is a window on the other side of the room and a locked door. He is tortured and scared of everything. The kid is feeble-minded. It has no clothing and is forced to sit in the darkness, alone on a dirt cellar floor in its own excrement’s. it is malnourished from only getting fed one bowl of cornmeal and water a day. The door is always locked except on the occasion a few people come to see him. It is usually the children being shown his existence. This child has not always lived a life as such. it remembers its previous life, its mother’s voice, and the feeling of sunlight on its skin. At the beginning of the torture, he screamed and cried for help. Now it only resorts to whimpering and occasionally asking the strangers for help and telling them it will be good now.…
Summary This story concerns the death of a child and failures of communication. Scotty, an eight year old, is hit by a car on his birthday. His mother had ordered a birthday cake but "there were no pleasantries between" her and the baker. Scotty is hospitalized, unconscious, and the cake is forgotten. Dr. Francis reassures the anxious parents that all will be well when the boy wakes up.…
The father begins spending less and less time at home, resulting in Dave getting even more beatings from his mother because she is blaming him for the issues in her marriage. That summer the family goes on a vacation and it seems as if Dave and his mother are getting along better until one day he is playing with his brothers and she scolds him for being too loud and is not allowed to go with them to the slide. Dave's mother punishes him even further by taking a dirty diaper and smearing it in his face, trying to get him to eat it. When he refuses she hits him and then the abuse stops long enough for her to tend to the baby and then she rubs another dirty diaper into Dave's face and tells him again to eat it. Just in time, the family returns and the abuse stops with his mother throwing a washcloth at him to clean himself up and then forces him to sit in the corner for the remainder of the night. The next chapter has Dave's father coming home even less, but when he does he helps Dave to wash the dishes. When his mother scolds his father saying the boy should not be helped, Dave's father becomes rarely seen at…
Comparing and Contrasting the children in Susan Skinner’s ‘The Minnow Catching Boys’ and ‘My Parents Kept Me from Children who were Rough’ by Stephen Spender.…