David has been my best friend since eighth grade. He has helped me through countless breakups and heartbreaks, he has held me while I cried, and he has taken up for me when I need friend. My mother will tell you that he is like the son she never had, and my friends will tell you that it is a wonder how, after six years of being best friends, we haven’t found a way to kill each other. Some years ago, David nervously told me that he was gay. He has grown up in the church all of his life, his parents are openly “anti-gay,” and therefore, David is forced to a life of secrecy. It has been a struggle, but David has embraced who he is, and even his partner of three years has become one of my very dear friends. Last month, David’s parents announced that they would be starting their own church. When my parents asked them what made them decide to leave their current church home, they replied by saying that their church had decided to allow a homosexual to be the priest, and seeing how this is “an abomination to God,” they thought it unwise to stay in a church “that allows those kinds of people in.” Since then, David and I have had endless discussions about what he is going to do. After all, to the rest of the world, he is an openly gay man. He still lives with his parents, goes to school full-time, and still manages to maintain a relationship with the same man for the past three years.
I do not like the conclusion that David is forced to come to. I wish more than anything that his parents would love and accept him for who he is, their son, without regard to the technicalities within his life. But David has decided that even at twenty years of age, he cannot ever tell his parents what he is without the risk of them disowning him...
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...e girl who is victim to abuses at home. David, Maria, and Kelly all come from different situations, but they are linked in that they yearn for one thing: love and acceptance. I wish more than ever, that the world wasn’t such a cruel place; where children are not teased and bullied in school for being “different,” where parents are accepting of their children’s choices even if they may not agree, where parents do not act in violence towards loved ones and cause harm, and where young adults like Kelly do not turn to alcohol, drugs, and self-mutilation for escape from the pain they experience every day. But wishing only wounds the heart, and soon the reality sets in that we are not fortunate enough to live in such a place. The love of a child is so pure, and I can’t quite seem to understand how, between then and now, we as a society have lost that towards each other.
First, David’s mother gave him enough courage to keep hope his father would be all right after the Nazis arrested him. Because their own house was no longer safe from Nazi invasion, David’s family was staying with friends. However, Nazis burst into the house they were staying in on...
...escribable sadness that lurks in the air around them. The way the young child will not be satisfied sends his father into a frustrated resentment of modern society. People take too much for granted in a place of hope, privileges, and freedom while war drags on in another country, ten thousand miles away. The appreciation of youthful innocence is thus juxtaposed with selfishness and an inability to be satisfied, which seems to create a double tone that creates a contrast about the reality of humanity. Sometimes we can never be content with what we have until something is lost or sacrificed. In youth and innocence, satisfaction and the appreciation of the world around us seem to come more easily, perhaps because life has not yet been tainted by greed. It may be part of human nature that, as one grows, his desires become more complex and thus more difficult to satiate.
... Uncle Frank. Then I got out and watched him go down the tracks. He was going toward town…”. He chooses to tell his parents what he knows, or at least part of what he knows, about Uncle Frank. This shows that he is developing in the area of honesty. Before, David would have kept all this to himself, rather than face his parents with knowledge he knows will displease them.
The author is attempting to teach the readers that no one should treat people this badly. David is an innocent child and does not deserve his bad childhood. David does not even do anything wrong, and his mother continued to treat him like an object. Pelzer succeeded in telling how cruel the mother is. He also teaches that people can be cruel to each other, and that it is important to teach people that kindness can go a long way. The whole book discusses his childhood. Pelzer wrote some sequels to tell the rest of his child life for the interested readers.
1. In the book, the father tries to help the son in the beginning but then throughout the book he stops trying to help and listens to the mother. If I had been in this same situation, I would have helped get the child away from his mother because nobody should have to live like that. The father was tired of having to watch his son get abused so eventually he just left and didn’t do anything. David thought that his father would help him but he did not.
...s life into what it is at the end of the novel. Some of these help him change for the better, but many of them change him for the worst. So yes, David became more of his own person, escaped the society of Waknuk, and started a new life in Zealand. However, he also was betrayed by his own father, kicked out of his home, and was persecuted by people he knew and cared about simply due to telepathy. All of these factors, in the end, result in David being a more mature and resilient character, but also make him rather resentful towards the society of Waknuk or the world in general. Growing up is always an uphill struggle, but for someone such as David Strorm, the path is even harder. Yet, in the end, he finally made it to the top, despite all of the adversity he faced. This truly is the mark of a person who is willing to give up everything in order to succeed in the end.
...rget it. This negative view of homosexuality is enforced by society, which David absorbs into himself.
She would mostly be alone and sit by herself being buried in books or watching cartoons. In high school she attended a program for troubled adolescents and from there she received a wide range of support from helping her get braces to helping her get information to attend community college. (59) Even with this she was already too emotionally unstable due to her family issues and felt like she couldn’t go through with her dreams to travel and even go into the art of culinary. She suffers from psychological problems such as depression and worries constantly about almost every aspect in her life from work to family to her boyfriend and just hopes that her life won’t go downhill. (60) Overall Kayla’s family structure shows how different is it now from it was in the 1950’s as divorce rates have risen and while before Kayla’s type of family structure was rare now it is becoming more common. This story helps illustrate the contributions of stress that children possess growing up in difficult homes in which they can’t put their own futures first they must, in some cases, take care of their guardian’s futures first or others around them. Again, this adds into the inequality that many face when it comes to being able to climb up the ladder and become successful regardless of where one
pity in the reader by reflecting on the traumatic childhood of her father, and establishes a cause
In James Patterson’s thriller novel, I, Alex Cross, Alex Cross and his family living in the nation’s capital must solve a beloved niece’s murder, and uncover the truth about the power players of the country -- all while nurturing the growing wound of the loss of a family member. The idea and importance of the connection between loss and familial support and love runs through the entire story, and one key lesson suggests that no matter how the loss of a family member affects the family, the results will often be similar, if not the same: the remaining members strive to support one another and often work together to find the true reason for the loss, always leading to a better and brighter future for everyone.
When this tale is looked at from a deeper perspective, it is learned that the mothers wish is to be loved and not have to worry about her child that has come in the way of her and her
his father and dead mother. David's father has an idealized vision of his son as
Lizabeth feels conflicted when she overheard her mother and father arguing as her father displayed distress over the fact that he could not support his family.When Lizabeth awoke in the middle of the night as her mother returned home, she she overheard her parents arguing and realized that her life was not as simple as she had once thought. Her father that she had once remembered as the strong, hardworking parent, was crying to her mother, “who was small and soft”, about how he could not support his family. This is new and unfamiliar to Lizabeth, and she feels as though, “The world had lost its boundary lines...Everything was suddenly out of tune, like a broken accordion… I do not now remember my thoughts, only feelings of great bewilderment and fear.” (8). While she had once understood her family’s dynamics, Lizabeth now feels confused and frightened as her view of her parents who she once believed she could lean on in times of need, was changed and they were not as perfect as the once thought. Not only was her family affected, but so was the rest of her town, her race, and much of her country, and all was the effect of The Depression. She is in conflict at what to think, and is upset and unsettled to this new knowledge that she has just gained, and how it has changed her
“The story employs a dramatic point of view that emphasizes the fragility of human relationships. It shows understanding and agreemen...
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.