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The effect of divorce on childrens behavior essay
Identity & adolescence essay
The effect of divorce on childrens behavior essay
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In his memoir, This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff explores his childhood as he attempts to define who he is and who he wants to be in life. Throughout the book Toby has an ideal person that he idolizes, but is unable to achieve. This version of him shows up when he's forging his applications for prep school and again when Mr. and Mrs. Howard take him to get new clothes and he's looking in the mirror. This person has confidence, gets good grades, and is a star athlete, and is cool; the kind of person you'd find at a prep school like the Hill school. Although within the narration of the book Toby never achieves his ideal, he leaves the reader wondering if he is capable of change.
Toby’s delinquent behavior early in th e book stems from his lack of a father figure in his life . Toby’s biological father deserts him and his mother early in the story, and he again deserts Toby at the end of the book when Toby moves out west to California to live with him. Similarly, the male adults Rosemary brings into Toby’s life are a negative influence on him. Roy, Rosemary’s ex-husband, is an alcoholic who is abusive to Rosemary and chases them from Florida to Utah. While he is around, he is a negative influence because he gives Toby a Winchester .22 Rifle and bonds with him over activities such as “tomcatting,” pursuing women for sexual gratification.
As a result of Toby not having a father figure in his life, he seems to lack a moral compass. Early in the book, Toby joins the archery club at school, run by Sister James. One day, she catches him pointing his bow and arrow at the other kids. Toby had not been the only one partaking in this activity, but the kids saw it as a game. When Sister James sees him, he realizes the extent of what he is doing. “Sister James had been about to say something. Her mouth was open. She looked at the arrow I was aiming at her, then she looked at me.. In
In the high criminal neighborhood where the other Wes lived, people who live there need a positive role model or a mentor to lead them to a better future. Usually the older family members are the person they can look up to. The other Wes’s mother was not there when the other Wes felt perplexed about his future and needed her to support and give him advises. Even though the other Wes’s mother moved around and tried to keep the other Wes from bad influences in the neighborhood, still, the other Wes dropped out of school and ended up in the prison. While the author Wes went to the private school every day with his friend Justin; the other Wes tried to skip school with his friend Woody. Moore says, “Wes had no intention of going to school. He was supposed to meet Woody later – they were going to skip school with some friends, stay at Wes’s house, and have a cookout” (59). This example shows that at the time the other Wes was not interested in school. Because Mary was busy at work, trying to support her son’s education, she had no time and energy to look after the other Wes. For this reason, she did not know how the other Wes was doing at school and had no idea that he was escaping school. She missed the opportunities to intervene in her son’s life and put him on the right track. Moreover, when the author was in the military school, the other Wes was dealing drugs to people in the streets and was already the father of a child. The incident that made the other Wes drop out of school was when he had a conflict with a guy. The other Wes was dating with the girl without knowing that she had a boyfriend. One night, her boyfriend found out her relationship with the other Wes and had a fight with him. During the fight, the other Wes chased the guy and shot him. The guy was injured and the other Wes was arrested
It takes many experiences in order for an immature child to become a responsible, well-rounded adult. In J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s main character Holden Caulfield matures throughout the course of the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Holden is a juvenile young man. However, through his experiences, Holden is able to learn, and is finally able to become somewhat mature by the end of the novel. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s story represents a coming of age for all young adults.
While nearly all the boys on the island ignore those standards British society has taught them, Ralph does not, and, as leader, tries to apply them to society on the island. Even when everyone else reverts to his inborn evil nature, Ralph sticks with that which is good, that which he learned from British society – civility. Ralph is different than the other boys, and because of that difference, it is only fitting that he cry.
Richard fails in finding manhood to emulate in his father. In the beginning of the book Richard’s father leaves his mother for another woman, making life for Richard’s family even more so difficult. “ After all, my hate for my father was not so great and urgent as my hate for the orphan home,” says Richard. When his father left, Richard and his brother were put into an orphan home, in order for their mother to work. When Richard, his mother, and his brother go to try to get money from Richard’s father, all he offers is a nickel to Richard which Richard refuses. Richard said that many years after, the picture of his father and the other woman by the fire, “ would surge up in my imagination so vivid and strong that I felt I could reach out and touch it.” Richard was unable to find manhood to emulate through his father.
The main characters of this novel are Ralph, Jack, Simon, and Piggy. Ralph, who represents civilizing instinct, is elected as the leader of the group of the boys and tries to promote harmony among themselves. Even though he seeks to lead the group and defeats Jack in the election, he doesn’t try to dominate people. Rather, he focuses on the group’s common interest of being rescued. For example, he gives responsibility to the hunters to keep a signal fire while he tries to make a shelter. Unlike Ralph, Jack would like to dominate people. This is especially evident once he becomes the leader of the hunters on the island. He tends to show the other boys how strong and brave he is while expressing his dominance over them. By the end of the novel, Jack usurps Ralph to become the general leader, in which position he shows how barbaric and cruel he can be.
As Ralph, “the boy with fair hair” matured to the boy with “matted hair”, his perspective matured from haughty to compassionate. Early on, Ralph believes that “Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and certain disinclination for manual labor”. He rejected Piggy’s “proffer of acquaintance”. He believed “this was [the children’s] island, [that] it was a good island”, that, “until the grown-ups come to fetch [them], [they] will have fun". However, by the end of the novel, Ralph understood that deep down the children fear the island, “the littluns, even some of the others, [talk and scream] as if it wasn’t a good island”. Empathy develops through experience and understanding of truth. Scout thought “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch”. At the beginning of the novels, Ralph nor Scout understood the true nature of Piggy or Boo. However, their respective experiences mean “the end of innocence”. Scout and Ralph begin to differentiate between empathy and authority, good and evil. Scout realizes “[Boo] was real nice, and most people are, when you finally see them”. Ralph recognizes the importance of his “true, wise friend called Piggy”. Yet concurrently, they see “the darkness of man’s heart”. Man discriminates even when doing so harms
When pondering about what an individual thinks of you, people have varying views. Some people are not concerned; to others it is the most critical matter on their mind. The feeling of being judged is a very potent emotion. Likewise, conformity is one of the largest controversies in today’s society; the behavior of someone in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards. So if someone personally made his or her expectations on what you should be like evident, would you change? In Matthew Quick’s The Silver Linings Playbook, he illustrates that judgment and expectations conform a person into someone they are not due to their personal identity. This can be seen through a character’s loyalty to another, dominance and the vulnerability it includes, and a character’s love and devotion. Conformity and the reasons for its appearance will be analyzed through samples from Matthew Quick’s bestselling novel.
Morrison’s descriptions of Cholly Breedlove’s past creates justification for his evil persona. Throughout the story, Cholly represents a broken man, who involves himself in many inappropriate events. His abuse towards his wife and children, as well as the incidents of rape, gives the reader the idea than an underlying cause is beneath the surface. Such events are revealed in Cholly’s life, including the abandonment from his mother, the death of his great aunt, humiliation by two white men, and the lack of growing up with a father figure. Soon after his birth, Cholly’s mother deserted him on a trash heap and his Aunt Jimmy rescues him. Growing up and not knowing his biological mother le...
Sammy’s immature behavior is predominant throughout the short story in multiple occasions. He is judgmental
A father as a role model is crucial in a boy’s transition into manhood. When a father guides his son from child to adult and still maintains power over his son, he succeeds. In Homer’s The Odyssey, we see how without Odysseus, Telemachus is still a childish, and how with the mentorship of Athena, who is disguised as a man, he is able to resemble his father and not overpower him. Similarly in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is very childish as he has no role model to follow. Holden seeks them out although, they give him irrelevant advice for his voyage to adulthood. However, because Holden is having trouble finding viable advice, he is negatively influenced by the movies. The reader is now able to see Telemachus and Holden both look to mentors for the guidance that they do not receive from their fathers, but while disguised Athena helps Telemachus to become a more like his father and a man as they are seen in society, Holden’s would-be mentors fail him because he is given bad advice such as when Mr. Spencer fails to give him advice for the future and Mr. Antolini’s misunderstood intimacy and is left with the entertainment industry for mentorship . Contrasting the roles that mentor characters play in the two novels highlights a fundamental difference between them: unlike The Odyssey, The Catcher in the Rye implies without the father figure in place, boys are left to turn to the movies for guidance into manhood.
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, is a classic novel about a sixteen-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, who speaks of a puzzling time in his life. Holden has only a few days until his expulsion from Pency Prep School. He starts out as the type of person who can't stand "phony" people. He believes that his school and everyone in it is phony, so he leaves early. He then spends three aimless days in New York City. During this time, Holden finds out more about himself and how he relates to the world around him. He believes that he is the catcher in the rye: " I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in a big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around-nobody big, I mean-except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What have I to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff..." (173). He briefly enters what he believes is adulthood and becomes a "phony" himself. By the end of the story, Holden realizes he doesn't like the type of person he has become, so he reverts into an idealist; a negative, judgmental person.
Rolph is introduced as an innocent young boy early on in the story. He “doesn’t speak up all that often” (1) and is “too young to notice” (1) the extremely sexual relationship between Mindy and Lou. The generalization Mindy brings forward for Rolph is “structural affection” (5) in which Rolph “will embrace and accept his father’s new girlfriend because he hasn’t yet learned to separate his father’s loves and desires from his own” (8). Rolph’s fragile depiction foreshadows the importance of nurturing vulnerable children. If a child is already susceptible to emotional confusion or damage in their youth, it is important to provide them with an extremely positive upbringing to give them confidence to make their own decisions as they mature. In the case of Rolph, however, he does not receive the support he needs to make a healthy transition from childhood to
The struggle to battle with the persistent grief of self-blame and lack of identity is a constant reminder to the barriers in relationships. Leroy grieves over the fact that he has lost his identity as a father and husband. Although he often thinks of Randy, the memories of him have faded. As a result, he latches on to Norma Jean but she doesn’t respond back. This causes him to feel like a failure of a husband. Norma Jean is grieving over the emptiness in her life. It was not the life she thought she would have. Her deceased son symbolizes her emptiness because of his death. She also feels emptiness towards her husband. For example, she feels very uncomfortable around him and always tries to find something for him to do. When Leroy arrives back home from his accident Mason implies, “he thinks she’s seems a little disappointed” (Mason 220), displaying Norma Jean frustrated with his lying around doing nothing but watching television and smoking pot. In addition, Norma Jean feels emptiness towards her mother, which is presented in the way her mother criticizes her. When tragedies occur in a family and self-confidence fades it can take over your life a...
Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye are two novels in which characters reflect on their attitudes and experiences as a source of emotional growth and maturity. Salinger and Toews show the importance of this reflection through the evolution of their characters’ – Holden Caulfield and Nomi Nickel – similar attitudes towards their schools, communities, and lives. Though Nomi and Holden both do poorly in school for various reasons, Nomi overcomes her obstacles by working to identify the source of them. Both characters also resent their communities because of the hypocrisy found within them. However, Nomi manages to find good within the East Village through self-reflection, while Holden completely severs his ties to his community. Nomi and Holden also possess similar outlooks on life. The evolution of these attitudes and the hope present for both characters at the end of their novels prove that true growth can be achieved only through rumination. Nomi changes her outlooks and learns from her experiences in A Complicated Kindness because she reflects upon them. Holden on the other hand, tries to escape his problems throughout the course of The Catcher in the Rye and as a result loses the valuable opportunities they present for personal growth. Through the evolution of Nomi and Holden over the course of A Complicated Kindness and The Catcher in the Rye, both Salinger and Toews demonstrate that it is only through introspection that people are able to mature and experience emotional growth.
Throughout the story, the boy went through a variety of changes that will pose as different themes of the story including alienation, transformation, and the meaning of religion. The themes of this story are important to show the growth of the young boy into a man. Without alienation, he wouldn't have understand the complexity of his feelings and learned to accept faults. With transformation, he would have continued his boyish games and wouldn't be able to grow as a person and adolescence. And finally, without understanding the religious aspects of his life, he would go on pretending he is somebody that he's not. He wouldn't understand that there is inconsistency between the real and ideal life (Brooks et al.).