Ordinary People: Relationship Between Family Members After A Tragedy

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The movie Ordinary People is about the relationships between family members after a tragedy. After Conrad’s brother is killed in a boating accident, Conrad tries to kill himself, causing his parents to send to him a hospital for recovery. The movie begins with Conrad first coming home from the hospital. The story follows Conrad, his mother Beth, and his dad Calvin. Throughout the movie there is obvious tension from recent events but nobody will acknowledge it leading to each person to act out in various forms of silence and violence. When Conrad first arrives home from the hospital he immediately represses all his emotions and is overall numb. Anytime the subject comes up he displays silence and just answers that he is fine. He eventually begins talking to a Psychiatrist who gets him to show his emotions. This causes him to act out numerous times in violence. For example, when their family is taking a picture his father tries to get a picture of Conrad and his mother, Conrad then yells at his dad to give the camera to his mom. Instead of keeping all his emotions bottled up causing him to erupt like that he could of tried to …show more content…

Numerous times she displays both acts of violence and silence. One act of violence is when she yells at Conrad for not telling her that he quit the swim team. She is embarrassed that she had to hear it from someone else that Conrad quit. Instead of lashing out at Conrad she could of tried to discuss why he quit the swim team and why he did not feel the need to tell her about it. One example of an act of silence is when she is in the kitchen and Conrad walks in. It is obvious Conrad wants to talk to her about something but she simply refuses and ignores him to answer the phone. Instead of ignoring the problem she could of created safety with Conrad to talk about his

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