Inferiority Minorities In Gentlehands, By M. E. Kerr

In the book Gentlehands, written by M.E. Kerr, a sixteen-year-old boy named Buddy Boyle is facing many inferiority complexes as a result of trying to be his best for a rich socialite named Skye Pennington. As a impelled action of this obsession, Buddy starts lying to his family, blowing off his little brother Streaker, and starts wearing a mask by using his wealthy grandfather to impress Skye instead of him. Over the course of the novel Buddy transmutes from an obsessed adolescent teenager to a mature young adult who becomes comfortable being himself as a product of many tragedies that he has faced.

In the early part of the novel, Buddy Boyle is characterized as a young, obsessed boy who changes his internal and external self for a girl he

Buddy is obsessed with Skye and due to this obsession, he is facing many inferiority complexes that are making him drift away from his real self and his family and loved ones. Because of this obsession, Buddy is making many rash decisions since “Beauregard was like a drug; so was she.” (71) Since Buddy is addicted to Skye and her lifestyle, he is acting like a drug addict by lying to his family and little brother Streaker in order to be with Skye. Yet, Skye is also addicted to Buddy because she is bored with her everyday life and as a result of this boredom, she is taking on a challenge that thrills her by dating Buddy who is out of her social class. Because Buddy is insecure with Skye, he focuses on everything he says and everything she says, so he can filter whether or not he stands up to her standards. Due to his habit of picking out every little thing he does or how Skye reacts, he felt a burst of confidence when he noticed that “Skye gave me all her attention,” (71) instead of paying attention to her friends that were also there. Because Skye is always bossing Buddy around and making fun of him, their relationship lacks equality which makes Buddy feel even more desperate to not lose her. An example of Skye being selfish was when she gave Buddy a sweater because it wasn’t for Buddy, it was for her, yet Buddy thought

At first, Buddy was trying to impress Skye by dressing nice and “borrowing glory” from his grandfather, but as the story progresses, his feelings towards Skye becomes more intense and his need for his grandfather becomes pathetic. In the last passage, Buddy walks through Trenker’s destroyed house “stepping over the broken and fallen things” (200). This symbolizes the summer and the broken relationships with his grandfather and Skye that have been destroyed throughout the summer. While Buddy had initially trusted and loved his grandfather, his feelings changed when he finds out that Trenker was covering up his evil by using pretense. When Buddy looks out the window at “the deep green ocean waters with the whitecaps flecked through them,” (200) he forgets about all that happened that summer and takes in the simplistic beauty. Leaving behind the sweater and the opera tapes, Buddy now realizes that who he is as a person isn’t defined by wearing nice clothes and having expensive things. Instead, he comes to the conclusion that he's defined by how good of a person he is and how he treats his family and loved