Who Can We Really Trust?

Author’s Note: In this essay I will compare two novels and explain how they are similar to one another. Also, how the main characters in each book have similar effects to the people that mean a lot to them.

There will always be that one person you can never trust and there will always be that one person that will never trust you after something horrible has happened to you. Whatever you do it’s hard to trust anyone these days. Just like the main character Allie in the book Breaking Beautiful, By, Jennifer Shaw Wolf and the main character Lisa from the book Dark Secrets, By Elisabeth Chandler both of the characters had a hard time trusting people after both of them lost a loved one to them and have a hard time telling the right people the truth and what they really knew. Lisa and Allie both went through similar situations, finding who to really trust.

Lauren  the main character from the book Dark Secrets  lost her mother when she was still a teenager, they say it’s an accident but there is a good chance that it could have been a murder too.  Now she is living with her Aunt Jule  and her 2 cousins, that is all she has left in her family. As she starts spending time with them she starts to get  suspicious about them and starts investigating in her mother’s death.  Now Lauren is having a hard time trusting people and figuring out what really happened to her mother because she knows more happened to her mother than just an accident.

Just like Lauren, Allie the main character in the book Breaking Beautiful , went through the similar situation, but her boyfriend had died in car accident, but she lost her memory from the accident and can’t remember exactly what had happened. Now the police are investigating in the accident. Just like Lauren, Allie was really upset at the beginning and both of them had a hard time talking to the people that were close to them, but yet could hurt them at the same time.

Even though both of them were really upset after losing a close one to them and choosing the people that they could really trust towards the end  of the stories both of the conclusions in the book end up to be similar. Lauren ends up finding out that her mother death was only just an accident and she just end up drowning in a lake. This effected Lauren a lot in a good way because she finally grained trust back from the people back that she only had in her life now and she could go back to living her life without worrying who to trust.

Unlike Lauren, Allie had a mom, dad, and a bother but she also found out that what had happened to her boyfriend was also an accident, he was an car accident. Ever since they had figured that out this had effect Allie a lot throughout the whole book because this meant to her that her family was always there for by her side. Not only did she realize that her family was  there but her ex-boyfriend has helped her the whole time while she kept pushing him off, but as she found out what had really happened to her boyfriend this affected because she was more positive and happy knowing that people were there for her and she could trust them without feeling alone all the time.  

In both of the books similar events happens and shows the feelings of people and what they go through when they lose a close one. They both end up doing the same actions and feel the same way towards others around them. But doesn't matter who is gone if you were close to them it effects you in some way just how it affected Lauren and Allie having a hard time trusting the right people. 

How They Really Feel

Author’s Note: In this essay I will use demonstrate my knowledge of text analysis of the book A Child Called it, By Dave Pelzer, and explain how this books relates to the kids in society today.

Every day, everywhere there are kids that are still getting bullied and abused by many other people that they are too afraid to stand up to. This is exactly how Dave, the main character in the book The Child Called It, by, David Pelzer. He was only 9 years old and he had to experience all of these horrible punishments happen to him by his mother, but his mother treated his son more like a slave than a son. This true novel shows the feelings of kids in society today.

One main reason that Dave never really understood what it meant to have the love from a mother, is because he felt as he were a some useless kid that no one cared about, which is exactly how his mother treated him. Even though there are many kids today that have a family, there are kids today that also don’t feel that close to their own mom. They are many kids that have a closer relationship to their dad than they do with their mom. Since the mom are too busy with the work they do at home or have a job they start to forget to spend time with their kids, which ends up with the dad spending more time with the kids. This can affect kids very much because this just makes them feel more useless and they need to feel wanted from both of their parents.

There’re people out there that will do anything to anybody to make them feel like so unwanted. Since they say and do bad things to them, it effects the person so much that they are unable to talk back to them and get any help from anyone, it only causes them to horrible things to themselves. Just how Dave felt when his mother wouldn’t  let him have any food if he was acting too bad and he would just go sneak out of the house and steal food from the store. “I’ve got to finish the dishes on time, otherwise no breakfast for me; and since I didn’t have dinner last night. I have to make sure I get something to eat” pg. 3 I feel like you shouldn’t treat someone so cruel if they don’t  something specific that you wanted to be done, especially if that person is your own son.

Not only has it effect people to make wrong decisions, but it can make them do many other horrible damage to themselves. Dave’s mom would beat him up so badly for everything little bad that thing that he would commit. For example, she would command him to do something and of he wasn’t paying attention she  would get so upset and yell out “If you don’t finish on time, I’m going to kill you!”pg. 85 But, this shows doesn’t affect Dave at all because she said this too many times to him that he just stopped caring. Just how kids feel today, especially teenagers when they called names and having that same insult getting yelled to them, it stick in their head all the time that they stop caring. Not only in themselves, but in school, family, and friends.

Nobody deserves being in this position, having people other people let them down just having calling them names and making them feel for not to care about anything anymore is just not right. Bullies wouldn’t treat other kids like that of the only knew what it would be like to be in their position, but since they don’t understand what it feels like to have someone make fun of you every day  they think it’s totally fine. If Dave’s mom were to be in Dave’s position she would finally understand and feel how horrible and mistreated Dave has been feeling for all of these years. This is what I think the author’s main purpose for this book, put yourself in others shoes and think before you speak and do any action, to really show how you can affect a person if you don’t take the time to stop and think.

Even though this issue will most likely keep happening, the most important thing to remember is that if we are or if we know someone who is getting bullied we need to tell someone, so kids today don’t feel like this today. According to NBCNEWS 1 in 6 students are getting bullied regularly. This is why kids are feeling the need to harm themselves and do things that they wouldn’t typically do. We should try to prevent people from bullying other kids so they can feel better about themselves and not have to go through this type of punishment every day. 

Ribbons

China's culture is different than ours  because they believe that bending the girls feet would make them more beautiful and that a rich man would want to marry them, but in our culture the girls over here care more about their hair and face looks like, they don’t care too much about their feet. And we extreme things like out beauty for hair, face, nail, clothes and make-up because there are people that  care  how they look like and they always want to look good so they would do whatever to try to look good and get the latest style in clothes and shoes.

 I feel like the way be extreme beauty can be good and bad in both ways because it depends on what they person feels like what they think beauty is, but if they care too much on they look and always waste time getting the right style all the time it can really effect them and they won't really know who they really are then, they just spend too much time impressing other people than themselves. The title for this story signifies pain for the ribbons because  people thought that girls feet would have too be bent in order for them to be pretty and  they would wear ribbons in order for their feet to stay like that and that caused pain for the grandma had to bear while she was younger. 

After You My Dear Alphonse response

The story After You My Dear Alphonse by, Shirley Jackson really relates to reverse racism because in the story when Ms. Wilson found out that Bloyd was black she kept treating him a lot of kindness and trying to give him a lot of food to eat and clothes because she thought that his family didn't have much of that and she tried really hard to make him feel like he has all of that. When Ms. Wilson said “And I have a few 

dresses that your mother or sister could probably use. Your mother can make them over into lots of things for all of you,” that really shows a good example of reverse racism and the author is really telling us that how you shouldn't treat people that way just because of their skin color and you don’t know what they went through so you can’t judge them just because of what they look like. This doesn't happen in today society as much as it did back then but there are some people even today that will judge people without really knowing them and treat them how they think they should be treated.