It is said that the child of an alcoholic father can go two ways. They can either follow in his footsteps or abstain from the drink. To a certain extent, this ideology can apply to the 240-acre town of Kenilworth. Here there are football games on Sundays, where sons join their fathers in fear of being deemed gay by their peers. There are cliques of mothers with their book clubs and luncheons and daughters maintaining the family alliances. There is the danger to children as young as eight being called a snitch by their closest of friends, while muffling their cries at night with a pillow in confusion of what to do. Kenilworth is a town hidden behind three million dollar homes and blonde highlighted hair, where suicides are thrown under the rug
Scott Russell Sanders’ “Under the Influence” is about a family growing up with alcoholism, mental and physical abuse. When Sanders was very young, he didn’t recognize that his father was an alcoholic, but as he grew older, he saw the bloodshot eyes, hiding alcohol, the deceptions, and the dual personalities of an alcoholic. “My father drank. He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food—compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling.” (215). Sanders story starts at the end, where his father dies from alcoholism. The turmoil and fear this family suffered because of their father’s alcoholism, is a story a lot of families are familiar with.
She touches on the cases of Kip Kinkel, Sam Manzie, and the movie “The Bad Seed”. Kinkel and Manzie received help at a younger age before they committed their crimes; there is irony that lies in that. The fact that Kinkel had been hearing voices or that Manzie’s Sega Genesis couldn’t be reached are not excuses to Quindlen. Through the author’s use of logos and ethos, she allows the audience to view the situation differently. Her logos is seen through a cause and effect dynamic. In both cases of the boys’ crimes, their psychological problems were the reason of their actions. Ironically enough, when the parents spent too much time focusing on the psychologist and not their child, the treatment did not work. When neither the parents nor the psychologist cared enough about the child’s mental health state, the treatment did not work either. This highlights the importance of the needed balance between home and doctor care. Both cases show ethos, along with “The Bad Seed”. Quindlen possess a disturbed attitude towards this movie. The movie portrays the punishment of children in this case for having struggles. This creates another reason why teenagers silence their problems; to avoid further negativity from those who
Throughout Ken’s life, his relationship with his father was distant and inconsistent. During Ken’s upbringing, his mother passed away when he was only six years old. Ken’s mother was the only family member who provided Ken with full security and pure love. She secured him with protection from his father’s cruelty. An example of this is when Ken’s father seized a tiger shark and forced Ken to touch it. Yet Ken was violently scared as he shakes his head and takes a step back while refusing his father’s demand. As a result, his father’s violence attitude emerged as he physically grabbed Ken’s foreman and pressured his hand to touch the shark. Subsequently, Ken’s mother came to the rescue and responded with a vicious slap to the father’s face (McKinney, 1999, p.24). This shows that Ken’s mother is not only known as a safeguard to Ken but she also represents a strong willed woman who opposes the ideal hegemonic masculinity. After the death of his mother, Ken was left with his abusive father as the sole parent who showed barely any form of support. A research found that children living in a single-parent household tend to obtain higher risk of abuse. Generally, single fathers are much more likely to use physical violence towards their children (Gelles, 1989). Since Ken spent most of his childhood being raised by his aggressive father. Ken narrates a negative hatred towards his father as he describes him as an irritable dangerous man who constantly displays his devil arch eyebrows and furious eyes.
Alcoholism does not only affect a person’s physical, mental, and emotional state, but it also changes the lives of people close to the drinker forever. It ruins relationships and trust that took years to build up, and may never be able to be restored. In Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle, she tells the story of her childhood in which her father was an alcoholic. Jeannette’s father, Rex Walls, was brilliant and charismatic when he was sober, but when he drank, he was destructive and dishonest.
It is hard to have a healthy relationship with someone when they are controlled by alcohol. The relationship between John Purcell and his son had drifted apart more and more by his actions and his choice of being alcoholic. As inconsiderate as John he says to a curate "Three dollars! Why, I could have taken Johnny to a burlesque show for less than that." There is a little boy present and their parents do not want their children exposed to such inappropriate jokes like John often expressed. John is inconsiderate therefore he does things without thinking. His recklessness continued when he met another untrustworthy father at the meeting. At that point when the outsider offered him a drink, he expected it happily expressing “You’re a lifesaver,” because of his dependence on alcohol he humiliated his child much further; and had not taken his wife’s oath of being on his best conduct into thought. When he went up the stairs to receive Johnny’s reward, on the way he trips and falls making his son embarrassed and
Alcohol has always been one of the most profitable industries in the business world. More than $400 billion worth of alcohol purchased in the US alone in 2013 according to an economic website. Alcohol is a common figure where it can be easily spot in every household to grand restaurants, however, it is a huge factor contributed to the death rate each year. It has ruined an innumerable number of people lives due to excessive drinking or affect by an alcoholic person. In his book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, Sherman Alexie emphasizes how significance alcohol can affect a teenager life, where Junior, the main protagonist has lost 3 family members because of alcohol. He shows that alcoholic should not be taken as a
“Alcohol addiction stunts the spiritual, emotional and mental growth of a person”~Anonymous. Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, is a book based off the author’s teenage life. The novel is about a poor 14 year old named Junior who faced numerous challenges in his life. Junior has experienced bullying, he was called a traitor for following his dreams, got in a huge fight with his best friend and lost three very important people in his life because of alcohol. Fortunately in the end, Junior got through the pain and lived on but he learned many lessons. One of the lessons Junior learned was that the fall into addiction, in this situation alcohol, leads to a great deal of misery for the individual and those
Though the family did not turn to violence like the Misfit, they still had their own set of issues. The other members of the family seem to be embodiments of society’s most self-interested and materialistic. O’Connor illustrates that with each generation of this family, there were no positive role models. Each generation had no effective parent to exhibit the correct way to function in society. Each generation then was stuck in
People often fall into some sticky situations, but how they deal with them is the thing that matters most. In The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, she takes the readers through her life, starting at her earliest memory as a three-year-old, constantly living in a state of homelessness. Throughout the story, Walls experiences countless situations from her father being an alcoholic, to everyday school bullies. She uses a series of coping mechanisms to deal with, and sometimes terminate these issues. In fact, everyone of her siblings and parents uses various coping methods for these same situations. These methods may not always be the most effective, but people, including the Walls family, nevertheless use them to get by on their
When Victor was a child his parents would drink a lot and would neglect him because they dealt with their pain by drinking. They drank because they were drinking away the problems caused by the generational trauma they and the generation before them had to endure. For example, during the New Year's party, everyone got drunk, even Victor's parents, left Victor by himself. Victor’s father and mother drank more
The play Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth is a historically influenced tale that focuses on themes of separated families and the mending of broken bonds. Along with author: Drew Taylor’s Ojibwe heritage, the Sixties Scoop was the historical event that inspired the play. The characters in the play are directly influenced by the Sixties Scoop which is the heart of the conflict between Janice(Grace) and Barb. Although unconventional, Grace’s random visit results in various interactions between Janice and the rest of the cast ranging from conflictuous to enlightening. Janice’s struggle to accept her Indigenous heritage and Grace’s bitterness towards Janice was only curable through the intervention of Rodney and Tonto. Tonto’s way of speaking along with his past, was the perfect catalyst for Janice to come to terms with her deceased mother and her heritage . The “Scoop” impacted Janice, Barb, and Tonto just like it impacted real families in Canada during the 60’s.
A small family of four, living in the Tory town of Redding. Life was great Mr. and Mrs. Meeker owned a small tavern that supplies their town with food, rum, and supplies. Their son Timmy helped around the tavern and did chores, because his older brother Sam was off at college. Everyone in Redding was close and knew the Meeker family, they all admired how they had raised Sam and Timmy. Every year after college was over, Sam would come home and visit, except one.
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." Thus begins the highly celebrated memoir by the name of Angela's Ashes, written by Frank McCourt. In this book Frank McCourt writes about his childhood, how his parents meet in New York and then decide to return to Ireland. He describes what it is like to be at the bottom of that city's tough social hierarchy, giving vivid descriptions of how class imposes severe limitations and restrictions. It is this topic, this theme, to which I
David Sedaris’ emotions, as a child, were greatly harmed by his mother’s alcohol use. Children, more than anyone are subject to their emotions. Children can be laughing one minute, and crying hysterically the next. The fragility of children’s emotions are augmented when they have an alcoholic parent. For starters, children born to alcoholic parents are much more likely to develop attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and child psychopathology (Reich,
In defining whether the portrayal of Rick’s use of alcohol is ethical, it is important to clarify what defines “ethical” in this context. In this essay, ethical is defined in society’s moral context. Alcoholism is traditionally perceived as wrong, and the portrayal of Rick’s alcohol abuse is