Less Than Zero Character Analysis

Parents. Immediately words like loving, caring, fair, nurturing, dependable and best friend come to mind when thinking of what a parent is. One word that doesn’t come to mind is immoral. Parents are supposed to be there for their children. Parents are supposed to teach their children valuable life lessons of morality, and help their children establish their own moral codes. Parents are not supposed to be a demonstration of immorality to their impressionable children. However, that is exactly how the parents in Less Than Zero behave. To describe them as parents is incorrect, as they are merely the biological producers of children. These wealthy “parents” are more concerned with themselves and consumed by materialism, than looking after their

In conclusion, after examining the parenting of three so-called “parents” in Less Than Zero, it became apparent that they are all just as immoral as their offspring, neglecting them and only providing monetary support. In Bret Easton Ellis’s novel Less Than Zero, the parents are just as immoral as their children, and act as a symbolic representation of the materialistic nature and hollowness of the upper class. Kim’s mother, a successful film producer, is not a successful mother, as she leaves her daughter to get updates about her whereabouts via gossip magazines. Clay’s mother on the other hand, is physically present in the novel, but is emotionally absent, as she provides zero support to her drug using son and couldn’t care less that he had just returned from four months at school. Clay’s father, much like Clay’s mother, provides no emotional support, and is not there when Clay needs a supportive figure in his life. Clay’s father’s only support comes in the form of financial support. These three parents feel as though their only duty to their children is to provide them with adequate finances to support their drug-fueled and reckless lives. This makes them less of parents, and more like ATMs. These parents lack morals, and represent the corruption within the belief system of the upper class, who obsess over material things more than their children. These people are not parents, and that is the