Violence In Rex Ogle's Free Lunch

Rex Ogle’s critical literacy story, Free Lunch, takes place at school when Rex gets made fun of and is secretly on the Free Lunch Program. The story also takes place at home in their 1 bedroom apartment with abusive parents and a baby brother. Rex has to watch and hear his mom and step dad fight over things like who’s going to pay for the little amount of groceries every two weeks or if they should let Rex play football and who would pay for that. Sometimes the fights can get too serious and lead to black eyes, holes in the walls, food splattered all over the place, or tables upside down. Rex gets abused by his mom and step dad if he does something wrong or he talks back. One lesson the story suggests is that violence can get out of hand and

Ogle describes how Rex and his family are struggling with paying the rent of the apartment and buying groceries for four people. Rex’s friends are joining football and Rex doesn’t want his friends to know that his family can’t afford it. Rex wants to show his friends that he is not a baby and says that he is going to play football. That night when Rex and his family sat down to eat, he pulled out the football waiver that his mom or step dad, Sam, had to sign in order for him to play and everything went worse than he thought. Rex says he wants to join football but his mom said “No way!” Sam steps in and says that Rex should join football. “Now hold on Luciana. If Rex is serious, I support him. Better than reading books all the time. He’d get some muscles, and maybe a girlfriend, and stop being such a sissy all the time.” This scene shows how the family is hurting because Rex’s mom said that they couldn’t afford it and she knows how much Rex wants to play football. Physical violence can start when someone has been emotionally hurt and they don’t know how to deal with

Sam goes on about how Rex could make so many new friends and that he would pay for all of the gear and pictures. Then Luciana says,” How are you going to pay for it, huh? You’re a loser and a deadbeat. A has-been. You don’t have any money. You don’t even have a job.” After that, everything goes wild. Sam throws the table on its side and hamburger helper goes flying all over the walls, and now Sam is all up in Luciana’s face and they are both screaming at eachother. Luciana knows how to hurt someone. She goes on about Sam’s alcoholic father and his ice-cold mother, about what a loser he is, how she needs to go out and find a real man, one that can pay the bills. Rex’s baby brother Ford is on the verge of tears so Rex picks him up and carries him to the bedroom to get him away from the fight. “Even behind the thin, plastic door, we can still hear it, feel it. Hear the brawl, the screams turning into thuds and gasps for air. Feel the floor vibrations of wrestling and kicking, someone trying to hold their ground, and failing. Feel two bodies crash to the floor, and hear a woman's voice wail in pain. And even though it’s so quiet,even twenty feet away, I know the sound of air moving aside as a fist comes down, again and again.” Rex turns on a radio and distracts Ford with a pillow fort. “When I try to go to sleep, I still hear the fighting outside the door. I try not to move, not