How Was His Family Dysfunctional?

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1. How was his family dysfunctional? What impact did that have on him?
Christopher’s family dynamic is dysfunctional in a multitude of ways. Christopher was born into a family founded on lies, deception, cheating, neglect, and abuse. Christopher and his sister were the illegitimate children of their father’s mistress. During their childhood, their father split his time between the two families, abandoning one at times to love another, before the families split when Christopher was a young child. The father stayed with Christopher’s family from then on, but was verbally abusive to the children as well as physically and emotionally abusive to their mother. The children would listen to the parents yell and scream at each other night after night, until their father began to beat their mother. On multiple occasions, the children would be forced into watching their father assault their mother. The combination of years of neglect, physical and emotional violence, as well as selfishness and the web of lies surrounding their supposed nuclear family led the children to have a deep seeded distrust and anger towards their parents. The parents’ obsession with money, status, and material possessions forced Christopher to denounce material possession, and led Christopher to develop an extreme response towards relationships and …show more content…

Even while away in college, he carried with him a deep seeded hatred for his parents. I don’t think Christopher was ever happy while in Alaska. I think he truly experienced happiness while on his journey to Alaska. The combination of the friends he made, as well as the simple life he lived allowed him to experience true happiness. Unfortunately, I think Christopher was too focused on the end goal of reaching Alaska that he was never able to realize his happiness until he was dying. At that point, it was too late, and he realized that for two years happiness was all around him, but he never took it

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