David Foster Wallace’s “Incarnations of Burned Children” shows that blame and remorse is inevitable in any frightening situation. For someone who went through decades of clinical depression himself, Wallace knew the theme of blame and remorse very well (Lipsky). "I don't think that he ever lost the feeling that there was something shameful about this," his father says. "His instinct was to hide it." (Lipsky). This could have added to his reasoning for publishing Incarnations of Burned Children. This story was full of emotion and overwhelmed by great sadness. It was obviously that someone who was struggling could write such a moving piece of work. As someone who was extremely successful throughout their time on earth, David Foster Wallace seemed …show more content…
to have it all. He had a family who loved and supported him, outstanding grades, and a God given talent to play tennis. It was not until his junior year of high school when his depression began to “haunt” him (Lipsky). You can feel Wallace’s pain while reading Incarnations due to his concrete diction and beyond descriptive language. When Wallace says “the child breathlessly screamed, a high pure shining sound that could stop his heart” you can visualize the gut wrenching scream of the child. This whole scene is just sad and triggers anxiety. His dark tone and harsh language exemplifies what the parents are going through in that very moment. Imagine what it must have been like to see and hear your child in so much pain, but not know what you could do in order to help him/her. That is exactly how Wallace felt except he was all alone. In his head he had no one to go through his struggle with, In the fictional story, the mother has the father and the father has the mother. Of course David had a whole support system backing him up, but when you are in a state of such deep sadness and loneliness it feels like you are walking completely alone. Blame plays a very big role in the making of Incarnations and in the life of David Foster Wallace. In the story when the father sees what has happened to his child he is quick to blame the mother because she was the one responsible for looking after him. Even mid-panic, the father, “adrenaline ebbing and an anger at the Mommy for allowing this thing to happen just starting to gather in wisps at his mind's extreme rear still hours from expression”. It is normal for parents to not want to take responsibility for actions because if one looks at it technically, taking care of a child is only fifty percent their job. For Wallace he struggled with “not only with anxiety but also with alcohol, anger, impulsiveness, obsessive love, pursuit of rejection, extreme self-consciousness, abysses of depression and lying even more than the rest of us” (Glachen). He easily could have put the blame on himself for being so depressed. A lot of the time he would take his anger out on his sister even though she was innocent in most situations (Lipsky). He even preferred not to go to her sixteenth birthday party with the reasoning, "Why would I want to celebrate her birthday?" which he told his parents (Lipsky). Wallace was full of hate because there were not many easy ways of dealing with his depression. Having a different emotion become a bigger part of one's everyday routine can sometimes subdue the pain and loneliness he felt from his depression. Another theme that had a great impact on the life of David Foster Wallace and in the story Incarnations of Burned Children, is remorse and regret.
What does a parent do when they feel like they are completely out of control? When their child is in so much pain but there is nothing that they could have done to prevent the pain from occurring. What is it that they do? They question everything. All of the possible outcomes that could have happened if they had just been there a couple minutes earlier, or made a different turn. When the mother and father in the story realized that their child was being burned by the scolding hot water just sitting in his diaper they were dumbfounded. When they began to unfasten his diaper they realized “the real water'd fallen and pooled and been burning their baby all this time while he screamed for them to help him and they hadn't, hadn't thought…”. The parents immediately began to feel like if they had just realized that the water was burning in the baby’s diaper they could have changed their child’s fate. Often when a person is clinically depressed they tend to dwell on practically any bad thing that may have affected them in the past. For Wallace he struggled with alcoholism and frequently attend A.A. meetings. These would often help, but they would be followed by another relapse into his depression
(Galchen). David Foster Wallace put himself into the characters of Incarnations of Burned Children by relating it to his depression and his dark ability to write. “The characters were iterations of himself” says D.T. Max of The New York Times. His whole life could be portrayed by the pain that the parents went through while trying to save their son. Wallace went through so much during his time on earth and it is hard to imagine how someone with such a trying disease could go on. He was extremely aware of his situation and could not go on for much longer after writing this story. " He wanted to write "stuff about what it feels like to live. Instead of being a relief from what it feels like to live" (Lipsky). Wallace’s writing was all around human. He did not beat around the bush or sugar coat anything. He brought the harsh reality into his works. He gave his audience a taste of the real world. That is something that people need to become more aware of: the real world. And thanks to David Foster Wallace, many have benefitted and will continue to benefit from his moving life story and his ability to make fiction feel real.
Lisa was in school and pricked herself with a needle that drew blood. Many told Lisa’s stubborn parents that she needed a psychiatrist. They simply refused to accept the fact that their daughter was in need of anything. When Lisa even screamed out that she needed help, they simply wouldn’t understand. She even w...
Guilt is a powerful emotion that can affect the path of a person’s life. Dunstan’s character in Robertson Davies’s “Fifth Business” experienced guilt at an early age and stayed with Dunstan throughout his life, and continually affected his relationships with Mrs.Dempster, Boy and Paul into an unhealthy one. Dunstan took the blame for the snow ball entirely without acknowledging boy was at fault. “I was contrite and guilty, for I knew that the snowball had been meant for me” (Davies, 11). From that point in his life, his guilt had the dynamo effect. He took blame for every tragedy that happened to the Dempster family since. Dunstan’s battled guilt ultimately controlled his action and relationships.
He continually shows his inability to accept blame and fully believes his problems are a result of another person’s actions, with the first person possibly being the one who gave him his name. He was very rebellious and would not listen or cooperate with anyone. An example of this was his mother's concern over what was becoming of him and her decision to take him to church. “When he saw the big lighted church, he jerked out of his grasp and ran”. It was clear his mother had lost all control of him at this time.
Heimowitz, Daniel. "Guilt." Psychology and Mental Health. Ed. A. Piotrowski Nancy, 3d ed. 5 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2009. Salem Health Web. 13 May. 2014.
Shame and guilt are often used interchangeably as they are often perceived to be the same or eerily similar. Yet shame is more associated with feelings of poor personal character and guilt is associated with what a person’s character does. Studies have shown that shame rather than guilt is a significant risk factor for the onset and maintenance of mental health difficulties and it has been further theorized that guilt is actually an adaptive response in which movement from shame to guilt represents a stage of mental health recovery (Dyer, et al., 2017). Though shame over particular events in the moment are not uncommon due to humanities imperfect nature, the problem resides in lack of shame resolution. May (2007) exemplifies this in that the
The Stone children find out that their mom is dying in the movie, which is a family crisis. The book states that the death of a parent is second on the severity of life stressor with only the death of a child above it. (Lauer, 2012, pg 290) The Stone family shows they are a resilient family and have developed this label from communicating well and have worked together to develop strengths that help them deal with stressors. (Lauer, 2012, pg 302) None of the family members avoid the problem or try to find blame in something or someone for their mom dying. Avoiding the problem and finding blame in others are two ineffective coping strategies that some individuals use. Avoidance can make individuals ignore the problem and turn to excessive drinking to help keep the problem off their mind. Scapegoating is when the individual acknowledges that there is a problem, but they turn on someone else and put the blame on him or her. The Stone family learns to cope with the crisis of their mom being sick in a way that brings them closer. They balance their concern with the concern of their mother and they work together to make a happy Christmas for her. They all realize it is hard to deal with there mom being sick, but they know that together they can handle it and they know their own worth and the worth of their family. In conclusion, the family realized the problem and worked
A Child Called "It", by Dave Pelzer, is a first person narrative of a child’s struggle through a traumatic abused childhood. The book begins with Dave telling us about his last day at his Mother’s house before he was taken away by law enforcement. At first I could not understand why he had started at the end of his tale, but after reading the entire book it was clear to me that it was easier to read it knowing there indeed was a light at the end of the dark tunnel. This horrific account of extreme abuse leaves us with a great number of questions which unfortunately we do not have answers for. It tells us what happened to this little boy and that miraculously he was able to survive and live to see the day he left this hole which was his home, however, it does not tell us why or even give us a good amount of background with which to speculate the why to this abuse.
Everyone has to deal with struggles during their everyday life. Some people’s problems are more serious than others, and the way that people deal with their problems varies. Everybody has a coping mechanism, something they can use to make the struggle that they’re going through easier, but they’re usually different. Some people drink, some people smoke, some people pretend there is no problem. There are healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, and people will vary the one they use depending on the problem they’re facing. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author and her family deal with their struggles in multiple different ways as time goes on. However, the severity of her situation means that the methods she uses to deal with it are very important. That’s why it’s bad that Jeanette’s and her family have such unhealthy coping mechanisms, such
When a person does something that hurts others, one will likely experience regret for the harm their actions. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the theme of guilt and its effects on your behavior, self-image, and your interactions with others is explored. Gene, in the beginning, sees Finny as his best friend, and relies on him for support and friendship; however, after Gene causes Finny to break his leg, his guilt causes him to change is personality and self-image. Their friendship is damaged by Gene’s guilt.
“A Child Called it” is a phenomenal book. After reading Dave Pelzer’s story about the horrors he experienced as a child, I’m glad he had the courage to share his story. As a child, Dave’s alcoholic mother physically, emotionally, and mentally abused him. The author portrays to the reader just how bad his childhood really was by writing about the time his mother stabbed him, the times she would make it sit in a cold bath, the times she would put him in a “gas chamber”, and even about the time she purposefully burned him using the stove. Even though Dave experienced all this traumatic events early in life and had many risk factors that put him at risk for failure, his resiliency and his will to live is what saved him in the end.
The death of her child occurred while she and Leroy were watching a movie at a drive in theater. Her child then four months old was in the back seat. Studies have shown the amount of guilt a parent places upon themselves leads to emotional, psychological, and social consequences (Boyle 933 par 5). The relationship between the two parents becomes difficult to manage and needs tremendous care and guidance to maintain (Boyle 933 par 10). Of all the deaths a person might encounter, the death of a child is very traumatic and likely to lead to most severe consequences. It is reasonable to anticipate that families who lose children from SI...
Foster Wallace, David. "Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 20 Sept. 2008. Web. 6 Feb. 2014. .
There is a pervasive pattern of childhood abuse or some form of neglect in studied cases of sociopaths. “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz’s, adoptive mot...
Early in the film , a psychologist is called in to treat the troubled child :and she calmed the mother with a statement to the effect that, “ These things come and go but they are unexplainable”. This juncture of the film is a starting point for one of the central themes of the film which is : how a fragile family unit is besieged by unusual forces both natural and supernatural which breaks and possesses and unites with the morally challenged father while the mother and the child through their innocence, love, and honesty triumph over these forces.
The story opens with the boy, whom to this point had ignored his mothers coughs, drops everything to rush to her aid as she “collapsed into a little wicker armchair, holding her side”. (O’Connor 206) As he watched his mother struggle trying to light the fire he told her, “Go back to bed and Ill light the fire”. (206) Now to this point, as the reader, I am unsure of the age of the boy, but I get the impression that he is a young boy. My idea of this boy is that he tries to take on too much throughout the day and eventually it was the demise of the opposite sex that eventually caused the meltdown of the “awesome” little boy. This is certainly something that will happen again to this young lad but he has definitely learned his lesson this time.