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Staples 'Short Story The Runaway Son'

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Staples states, “The past is never really the past; what we have lived is who we are” (Staples 375). The shape of our personalities and values is something we learn from childhood. Our lives have many ups and downs but that is what makes us the person we are as an adult. The son in Staples story "Runaway Son” as much as he would like to never really escapes his past. He will always have the protective and nurturing instincts that he had growing up. In Staples short story “The Runaway Son”, the son’s life shows that how we were raised and how we lived in our childhood determines what type of person we become in adulthood. During the son’s childhood, he dealt with a lot of despair. His father worked numerous hours, was never home, and when …show more content…

Escaping the past will never happen and how he was raised will always be a part of him. One day as he was going to the doctor he saw a little girl walking towards the street. The mother of the girl was looking in her purse for her keys and never made sure the little girl was standing beside her. If the son had not been there and stopped the little girl from going in the street, the girl could have gotten injured. Even when the son went to college not far from his home, his thoughts of escaping were present. The college was only two miles from his home but he never went back for visits. Only when his sister came to see him and ask him why he had abandoned them did he realize he had never really escaped. The thoughts of home and being back there made him feel like a child again, making him feel protective and responsible. These thoughts and feelings will never leave him. In conclusion, how we were raised and how we lived as a child shapes us into who we are according to Staples “The Runaway Son”. Escaping the past is very hard because someone really cannot escape it; they have to embrace it. When the son became a caretaker, everything was his responsibility since his father was never around. In the

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