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The Fifth Child And A High Wind In Jamaica

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Analyzing Perpetrators and Victims in The Fifth Child and A High Wind in Jamaica. Novels, The Fifth Child and A High Wind in Jamaica, both present children and adults as simultaneously perpetrators and victims. Individuals who carry out harmful immoral acts upon another individual are known in society as perpetrators, while on the other hand the individual who is the one being harmed because of a harmful immoral act is known as the victim. In most novels it is evidently seen which character is defined as the victim and which is defined as the perpetrator, however in some novels authors don’t make it so obvious. Due to the lines drawn between both perpetrators and victims being ambiguous, this paper will further analyze who the victims and perpetrators are in The Fifth Child and A High Wind in Jamaica. In The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, Ben Lovatt, the fifth child of Harriet and David Lovatt, is suggested to be a genetic throwback to an earlier period of human history and looked upon as a monster. Ben Lovatt has several roles in this novel and his key role being the notorious …show more content…

He is a victim of society. During this historical period, things such as down syndrome, autism, or psychiatric disorders were not commonly known or educated to people. Ben was verbally abused due to his looks being called names such as alien, goblin, Neanderthal baby, changeling, gnome, alien, destroyer, and even a monster by his own mother. He was also a victim of physical abuse. Harriet Ben’s mother being the indirect perpetrator in this case when Ben was thrown into an institution and mistreated. “On the floor, lay Ben. He was unconscious … His pale-yellow tongue protruded from his mouth. His flesh was dead white, greenish” (Lessing 82). In The fifth child, not only was the main character a perpetrator but wretchedly a victim as

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