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A Child Called It Analysis

Decent Essays

A Child Called It, is an astonishingly horrific true story of “one child’s courage to survive”. Once said “Such a story cannot fail to move.” this is exactly how I felt about this book. Dave Pelzer the author and protagonist of A Child Called It tells the story of his life as one of the worst seen cases of child abuse in the state of California. Dave’s mental strength and resilience is what truly drives the theme of the story and the physical and mental abuse that he had to endure.

This book taught me just how important it is to pay attention to those around you and not just contribute to the bystander effect. In many cases throughout this story it was obvious that the there were some terrible issues going on within this family that still some how seemed to go unnoticed. Both parents being alcoholics, their son going to school with bruises and injuries daily, having to steal food from classmates and having to wear the same dirty clothes all year round. To me those all seem like obvious red flags, yet for some reason the numerous adults in this memoir who knew what …show more content…

Dave is depersonalized by his mother and treated as less than human. She would refuse to call him by his name but refers to him only as “The Boy.” It is this that enables her to ill-treat him and not be troubled by her conscience. She then goes even further when she uses the impersonal pronoun that give the book its title: “You are a nobody! An It! You are nonexistent! You are a bastard child! I hate you and I wish you were dead!” With this attempt to delegitimize Dave’s entire existence, she is through her eyes denying him the right to live. This is how Dave’s mother found it easy to inflict inhuman punishment on

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