Analysis Of A Child Called It By Dave Pelzer

There is plenty of wrong in the world, however, with your own life going so well you may not realize how bad it may be for others. You have wrote your own story, and without asking others their’'s you will never be able to understand what is going on in the background. This all relates to the story by Dave Pelzer called A Child Called “It” (1993) about his life as a kid and his abuse mother that would play sadistic games with him that would leave him almost dead. This biography was told in California in 1972 and actually starts out describing the day the author was actually saved from his life of torture. After it explains the day he became “free” it flashbacks to the beginning and tells all the ways he was brutally beaten and starved by

his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother. The story then ends with Dave praying to live to be one day away from his mother, and wishing if she was going to kill him then for her to just get it over with. It ends with him losing hope, but begins with him being saved and showing that him fighting so hard the entire time was worth it. Dave Pelzer creates images from the life he lived through the uses of fictional techniques such as imagery, pathos, and persona because it allows the reader to see how much more powerful they are than just the use of facts.
First off, Dave brings so much emotion to the true story of when he was a boy through the use pathos. I say this because the author makes you feel bad for what he had to go through to live the life he has today. The way he explains everything that happened and the way he was being treated makes you want to save him yourself. However, he makes it to where you don’t just feel sympathy for him but he makes it to where the reader also feels anger towards his entire family, not just the mother. This is because he explains how she’s so evil so well. Dave’s mother treats him in ways that would break any person down and he describes it and how she sees him as not deserving life, but in doing so he makes the reader feel that really it’s the mother that doesn’t prefer to live and perceive her as a monster. Dave makes you feel the emotion of anger, sympathy, sadness, and hatred all at once through just the use of words. An example of this is when Dave wrote, “Gripping my arm, Mother held it in the orange-blue flame. My arm exploded and I yelled out in pain…[however] she would not let me go, and I knew I couldn’t do anything about it” (41). Just from reading that small part you feel anger towards his mom, and wonder why any mother would do that to their own kid. This is how it is the entire book.
Secondly, not only do you feel emotion the whole time you read this book, but you start to pick up Dave’s use of persona in his story.

The author illustrates the time in Dave’s life when everything was actually good because his mother wasn’t always as sick as she becomes. Dave writes, “Mom told me she was crying because she was so happy to have a real family,” (23) when talking about a Christmas before his two little brothers came along and things got bad. However, after the mother gets “sick” (as Dave says multiple times in the book) the persona he gives his mother is this horrible woman that almost kills her own son. She starves, beats, and tortures him everyday like it is her personal routine. The reader begins to feel that she is a horrid woman, that doesn’t deserve life herself, however, in a way some readers may feel bad for her. You begin to realize that maybe she does this because her marriage isn’t doing great, so she needs someone to blame for it, and since Dave was the only other one around when the marriage was good she goes after him. . Even though, the only reason her husband eventually leaves is because she’s so terrible to not only Dave but his dad as well. This being because Dave’s dad actually tried to help him against his mother, however, in a way he is also given the persona of a horrid person because he never actually does anything to get Dave out of the situation and gives him false hope by telling him one day they will get away from the hell together.

Dave’s dad eventually does get away, but he leaves Dave there to pretty much rot and suffer without a care in the world. So, in a way, his dad is just as bad as Dave’s mother. The bad persona towards Dave doesn’t end there though. The author eventually turns his mother, Catherine, from Mother to “the Bitch” as the book progresses.
To continue, the last literary technique you can really pick up on when reading Dave’s story is the use of imagery.

The use of imagery comes out all the time in the book and at times it is very vivid. In fact, when my own mom read this book, she wasn’t even able to finish it because it was too much for her. With the way Dave describes being tortured and hurt, it makes the readers feel beaten down themselves because they can’t do anything for him in his story. The images he makes his readers imagine are things like the scene where his mom stabs him, when she makes him inhale toxic chemicals, or even when she starves him then makes him puke to see if he’s been eating. Dave illustrates, “ Mother began creeping towards me…[eventually] Mother rammed the cold spoon of ammonia into my throat,” (75) explaining one of the first times his mother makes him drink ammonia. He continues, “I became terrified, tears of panic streamed from my eyes and I began to feel myself drift away…[and soon] knew i was going to die.” (75). Just reading that small part makes you able to image everything happening. With the way the author describes the cold spoon and how he becomes terrified and crying makes you able to try and imagine what is happening in your head. It also brings out the emotion I talked about earlier and makes you want to just go hit his mother over the head yourself. His use of imagery makes you want to save him yourself. The way his imagery is so successful is his way of words and

how they make you want to take his mom’s humanity away just like she did him.
In conclusion, this book is full of tons of emotion causing the reader to either not want to put it down or have to put it down because it is too much. Dave Pelzer does an amazing job at describing his abusive lifestyle as a kid through the use of literary terms to make it as much of a powerful book as it is. He not only executes the way of making his readers feel great emotion but he achieves at making the theme that you can’t know what is going on in other’s lives come clear. Pelzer tells how his mother, Catherine, does horrible actions to him such as: burning his arm over the kitchen stove, smearing a feces-stained diaper in his face, making him vomit and then eat it, stabbing him in the stomach, starving him for 10 days, making him drink ammonia and separating him from his four brothers, who never witness his abuse. He became a #1 International bestseller through a story that brings some to tears through reading it. He was able to escape from the hell that his mother built for him, and turn that around to make a better life for himself all through his writing and using his story. Now, you just have to read it to catch the use of imagery, persona, and pathos. Along with finding some of your own literary terms he uses instead of just facts. This was a very depressing read, but it was worth it. It makes people think about what you may not be able to see behind the doors of other’s lives.