Review Of ' Lullabies For Little Criminals '

Young adults are losing their childhood innocence; replacing it with the world of adulthood. The most reoccurring theme throughout the book, Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill is the loss of innocence. The protagonist named Baby, lives with her father, Jules who is a heroin addict. Jules and Baby are constantly moving to different apartments in Montreal, where Baby is exposed to drugs, juvenile detention and forced into prostitution by her pimp. Baby experiences many obstacles in her life at the age of thirteen because she doesn’t have a father that loves her enough to guide her into the right path of life. Therefore it did not take long for Baby to lose her innocence.

As a little girl, I saw the world in the best light simply because innocence clouded my judgement. As a child, I was innocent of mortality, as a teen hope, and as a young adult love. However, later on that innocence took on the role of ignorance. Not in the sense of not being knowledgeable or educated on the matter, but rather knowing it all too well that I choose not to acknowledge it. Innocence can be served as an instrument to block out surroundings when problems arise. It is an illusion of reality to protect what the individual desires to be true to what is actual. In Wendy Cope’s poem “Reading Scheme,” Cope writes about an affair more from the perspective of children by using the villanelle form to illustrate the inability of the

Nature versus nurture, is the question. Are we really born as the person we always will be, or does external influences have a crucial effect on who we will become. In the novel Lullabies for Little Criminals the protagonists Baby is seen to have an absence of an adequate caregiver or prominent parental figure in her life. Her mother passed away when she was very young with only her teenage father to care for her. Jules her father, shows little interest in his child. Constantly leaving her to fend for herself and issuing verbal and physical abuse. This causes the young adolescent girl to experience great hardship as she tried to get on with life, without proper role model and guidance. The adverse character development of Baby throughout the novel supports the theme of the necessity of a proper role model in the upbringing of a child. Without the proper guidance a child will begin to take impression to her environment. No matter who they were destined to be, they will always become products of their own surroundings. Her impression of her corrupt environment causes her many problems in her life such as her inability to form and maintain healthy romantic relationships, to gain a reputable and appropriate career for her aptitude, and her desire not to pursue a higher level of education.

The second experience that Baby has which causes her loss of innocence is being placed in foster care while her father is in the hospital. First of all, while Baby spends time in foster care she is exposed to many sad, disheartening realities about life and her own childhood. Baby is forced to come to terms with many sad realities and she sees things that children should never see while living in foster care. For one, she watches as a boy is beaten up by some bullies and then yelled at by his uncle. After that, the boy sinks into a deep depression, showing Baby a sad side of life. Also, the boy’s uncle asks Baby “...Is he [her dad] still selling weed?” (33). Baby is forced to come to terms

In “Lullabies for Little Criminals,” there are many small objects that are relevant to Baby’s life. Objects can have remarkably profound effects on a person’s life, whether they are of sentimental value or another form of personal meaning, they have an impact on us. An object can mean many things to different people. An abandoned doll in a trash bin could be seen as old and ugly to an average person, but to the person who originally owned the doll; it could have been particularly special. In the novel, Heather O’Neil illustrates the effects of such objects on Baby and their symbolic meaning. In “Lullabies for Little Criminals,” there are three objects that

In many cultures, coming of age is often celebrated because children become young adults who grasp self-awareness and accountability. At the same time, childhood is threatened by responsibility, which is dreaded because there is an unpredictable world of adulthood waiting with no guarantees. James Hurst demonstrates the journey of growing up through life experiences everyone goes through in the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis”. Throughout his use of mood, setting, and symbolism, Hurst shows that maturing requires reflecting on past experiences and losing innocence, which then can transform one’s outlook on life.

Katie is raised by a single mother like Tyrec and uses the childrearing method of natural child growth. That’s it. The Brindle’s are a poor family struggling to make ends meet as Ms. Brindle is currently unemployed as she raises her eighteen month old child “Melmel” and lives off the welfare system and child support she gets. Due to the abusive lifestyle that she has experienced as well, she has taken a larger toll, physically and psychologically, than a lot of thirty-seven year old women. Katie herself has experienced difficulties with her being sexually abused in the first grade that has affected her life. Therefore, the involvement of Katie’s extended family is huge. Her grandmother plays a role in being an additional caregiver in her life. Social problems seem to be an everyday occurrence for the Brindle’s as they try to live their everyday lives. As a result, Katie acts older than her age (nine years) due to the added responsibility of trying to take care of herself at times. Ms. Brindle’s parenting style of natural growth may have affected how mature Katie is, but it the Katie’s past and current environment that has had a greater influence in her

Throughout the novel “Lullabies for Little Criminals”, author Heather O'Neill illustrates how challenges in one’s upbringing can lead to obstacles later as one enters adulthood. This novel depicts how the absence of a mother in early childhood years can cause the loss of a child's innocence at a young age. As a result of lack of parental support, a child is forced to make an early transition from childhood to adulthood which can lead to obstacles later in life. The loss of Baby’s, the protagonist, innocence is portrayed through a variety of experiences over her short-lived childhood.

The novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals takes place in the ghetto of Montreal. It focuses on the life of a twelve year old girl named Baby. Baby’s mother died in a car accident shortly after she was born and her father is a heroin addict. Her father, Jules, is not often home and does not pay much attention to Baby even when he is. Baby begins to take orders from a pimp, Alphonse. Confused and lonely, she does as he says and takes on the role of a child prostitute. The novel takes the reader through the pains and struggles of a young girl living in a drug-ridden city with no parental guidance to keep her out of trouble.

At the beginning stages of reading Lullabies for Little Criminals, written by Heather O'Neill, I developed the impression that it was going to be very sad and depressing due to the difficult storyline. As I continued to delve deeper into the plot, I became very intrigued by the novel as a whole, but particularly the protagonist of the story, Baby, as her childhood is dysfunctional which intrigues and emotionally stimulates the reader. The novel commences by providing the reader with insight into the history behind Baby’s birth. Both of her parents were "fifteen when [she was] born” (O’Neill, 4) and her mother “died a year later, [leading Jules] to raise [Baby] all by himself" (O’Neill, 4). As

Childhood has its own ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling which are proper to it/ child’s mind considered as a blank state to be inscribed by experience: the infant is often compared to a ‘white paper’ to be written over or to a plastic substance (wax) to be molded

This section of the novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, introduces the rising action and expands on the theme of childhood. Throughout the chapters, the main character undergoes many dynamic changes that cause her to develop her character, because of her relationship with Jules continues to deteriorate that she starts smoking. On the other hand, there is the introduction of new minor characters such as Theo, Zoe, and Alphonse. Alphonse is the antagonist of the novel that represents the adult perspective of Baby as she experiences the world of work, hardships, and the loss of innocence at a young age. In addition, she encounters another internal conflict in the novel, which is the struggle of Baby trying to make new friends. The author uses

Pathway effects define how “…early life experiences set the stage for future experiences, which in turn give shape to subsequent ones” (Davidson 103). Therefore, social environment in which a child is surrounded by the majority of their life ultimately defines the individual the child will become as stress and neglect can cause changes in a child’s behaviour. Baby is introduced to certain habits and behaviours at a young age which causes her to attempt to reproduce these behaviours later on in life. The novel depicts the need for a proper role model to look up to and depend on in order to guide Baby to make good decisions and establish her role in life. She says that “The women that I was the most crazy about were drug addicts” (O’Neill, 163).

Childhood innocence is veiled by joy and ignorance while the hardships of adulthood are incoherent to the imagination of children; as seen in the troubling world around kids as one of bliss rather than that of worry as an adult. Children’s views on the “real world” are easily manipulated but the outside sources that are in their everyday lives. These sources come from the environment around them, such as problems that adults suffer relating to stress, relationship struggles, job security, and happiness of their family. The unknown problem that children seem to have masked over them is the importance of reality and how

imagination lay now under the weight of sadness and strict laws of society. The feeling of