Growing Up In A Strong Family

The family is a bizarre institution. Families are where we receive our cultural education, learn to walk, and internalize the rules of the world. At the same time, families are where we receive trauma that leaves us with dysfunctional personalities traits and maladaptive behaviors. The family at its core is where we are initiated into the best and the most brutal of what humanity has to offer. The Eastwood family in the film Crucible of Horror is a prime example of the nihilistic potentiality of the family institution.

How is it that two men that come from identical backgrounds end up being completely opposites? Wes Moore takes us back to his childhood growing up, and also introduces us to a character sharing the same name as him, and similarly, the same lifestyle. Both of the young men shared the absence of a father figure, living in poor neighborhoods, bad influences, and lack of education. While reading, we question “how?” and “why?”

Unfortunately, I was not surprised that Johnnetta and her sister Sonya fell into prostitution as well as substance abuse because living on the streets was to be expected due to their upbringing. In Michael’s case, it was heart wrenching to see him falsely confess to abusing his sister solely because he was overwhelmed by the fear of his father. Although he had been separated from his parents for some time, it was upsetting to imagine the kind of differing emotions, both angry and devastated, Michael experienced after finding out of his father’s murder and suicide. Although the stories of their childhood gave me similar feelings to what I have when I hear of any abuse, it was a breath of fresh air to hear of the successes of two victims. I was taken aback

His father died when he was only three years old, leaving the family in economic hardship. His mother struggled to raise eight children on her own. However, despite the financial difficulties, she realized the importance

The wind and rain caused mould to grow on houses, weakening the framework. The house would then fall leaving all the occupants homeless, and left in the cold to die. To the people living in Richmond at the time, “’to be poor was to be cold.” With poverty sweeping pass all the residents of Richmond like a contagious disease, most people faced the challenge of poverty. Charlie and his family are extremely poor after his father passes away leaving them with no steady source of income.

“Family is the center of everyday American life. Our parents are our first protectors, first teachers, first role models, and first friends. Parents know that America’s great reward is the quiet but incomparable satisfaction that comes from building their families a better life.” Having a dysfunctional family where both parents are not present and one is present can affect a child’s life and the way they approach things because they have no one to talk to or advise them on certain

A family contains young minds that are at first taught the building of personality or character and controlling the emotions of him or herself, while also being taught how to set goals for life (Ritter) But as new generations came of age, the family became a weakened and fractured unit as husbands and wives gave way to the human nature of adultery in a widespread manor. Here in America, the family has been under constant assault and broken marriages and broken households are now a normal thing to see. Few fathers show the guidance and teaching to their children that is needed often requiring the mother to take on both roles. As children grow up being more spoiled and pampered to, they are never learning to accept and recover from setbacks.

In the midst of all of this he finds a balance by focusing on what really matters. At the same time this keeps him focused on his main goal which is education. Education will be his family's way out of poverty. Through seeing his younger brother that is unemployed and will be having a child soon he looks beyond this and is genuinely proud of where he comes from. He realizes how strong his family is when he seems them fighting through poverty and making things.

The profound novel, The Help, can be interpreted as having many themes and subliminal messages about life, but to truly understand the meaning of them, the conflicting points must be recognized. Due to the fact that the setting of the novel is during segregation, the friction between blacks and whites is what creates the novel. Although it is easily recognizable that one of the main conflicts is segregation, there is a major conflict between two prominent characters, Hilly and Skeeter, wealthy white women. Some of the issues within this novel lye in location and the social aspects of living in a small southern town in that time. There are several underlying conflicts in The Help, but the main one that sets up all the themes are the conflicts

The impoverished conditions in which the residents of this community live are difficult based on the surrounding violence and discrimination they face. Tre, Ricky’s best friend, is able to survive the surrounding violence and discrimination through his father’s sensational leadership; he therefore knows what to do in situations he faces among his friends. However, his friends are not so lucky. For example, Dough doesn’t have great leadership or a father figure, but is raised by a single mother who is determined to get her children to succeed; nevertheless, her main focus is Ricky because he has the most potential; he is an

Certainly, the movie showed how Hoovervilles were a sad place to be. In the movie, Hoovervilles are portrayed as a dangerous place because a scene showed many police officers on horses arguing with civilians, and citizens looking out the windows with a look of trepidation, which gave a picture of disarray, and disfunction inside the Hooverville. In real life, Hoovervilles had a small governing system and were able to function like an actual city, as long as they held unto the sanitary laws. Only men were allowed to live in these small towns, but occasionally women, and children would come in and out of the Hoovervilles. The movie showed the disfunction of the police and the male society, the shacks of the homeless males, and how indigent was the life of a Hooverville citizen.

In the novel, Findley negates the idea of the nuclear family and showing real life family dynamics. Through out the novel, the struggles the characters endure help teens relate to struggles

Although all of these characters were seen as vices, this tragedy brought out the family relationship in all of them protecting each other until the end. To many of us in this world, the definition can vary from person to person. To me I see family as the love that never wavers and that your love for another person would lead you to do almost anything to protect them. Uncle Billy seemed to have no sense of the word family because he stole and left them to die to save himself which leads me to believe that he doesn’t have the ability to love. This may be because he was never loved as a child or just doesn’t understand what family is.

I define my family more like Robert Hayden than Linda Hogan; I define my family as my mother, my sister, my grandparents, and house where I grew up. Linda Hogan’s family was a nomadic tribe that moves from place to place, and she wrote about problem of perception of herself as a part of one race; Robert Hayden in his poem describe don’t understanding of parents’ love in a family; while I can describe my family issue as a misunderstanding the role of the father in the family because I grew up without the father. My mother got divorce when I was a child, and couple years late my father was killed. Like Hayden I can say about my house that I felt “fearing the chronic angers of that house” because my dad was alcoholic, and I saw a lot family violence

Family, for most people, is defined as a sort of safe haven for people to go to. For others, families may be fragmented, split, or may have wrong ideals as a whole. Broken families, while they may have a long lasting effect on the spouses, can also have a detrimental, long-lasting effect on the children of these marriages which can lead to certain mental illnesses. For example, in the story of the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Deborah faces the emotional effects of her mother’s death. Other stories such as “A Rose for Emily”, show how Emily 's fathers parenting techniques and a lack of a mother figure burdened her future.