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Striving for Emotional Perfection in Ordinary People Essay

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Striving for Emotional Perfection in Ordinary People

Throughout the life cycle, a person undergoes many changes. One matures both physically and emotionally as time passes. Emotional growth is quite often more difficult than physical growth. A person must realize his faults and admit to them before he can develop emotionally, while one does not need any self-analyzation to develop physically. In her book Ordinary People, Judith Guest depicts the struggles man must experience in order to reach his ideal emotional perfection. Conrad, the book's protagonist, and his father Calvin, were both searching for higher levels of emotional health. Conrad had to let out and face all the feelings he had repressed, while Calvin had to correct …show more content…

Berger, "She loved my brother, too. It's just me"(120). He concluded that Beth could not love him because there was something wrong with him. After the big fight that Conrad had with his parents, he revealed to his father his opinion of Beth's feelings for him. Conrad tells him, "All right, then. She hates me"(114). Because Conrad felt that there was something wrong with him, he did not know how to react to situations nor did he know when to express his feelings. For his Christmas present, Conrad's parents and grandparents bought him a car. His response to this extravagant present was, "Yeah, okay… Thank you both, it's beautiful really. It's terrific"(126). He was not overly excited, as one should be, on receiving such an extraordinary gift. He was not quite sure how to act, so he repressed all of his feelings. In an early conversation with Berger, Conrad said, "What I'm doing here is that I had to come"(41). This proves that Conrad was in denial of his psychological state and foreshadows Conrad's severe state of depression. Conrad repressed all of his feelings and emotions. He told Berger, "I don't feel anything"(98). Later on in the conversation, Berger told Conrad that the "Only way you're ever gonna get to know him [the guy in the closet] is to let him out now and then."(100) This alludes to the fact that Conrad repressed his feelings and was extremely depressed. All of these factors led to

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