The Birthday Party By Harold Pinter

The Book A Child Called “It” written by Dave Pelzer who survived one of the most severe child abuse cases in history. He wrote about his life from the beginning when family life was good, and throughout the abusive years, until he was finally rescued. Before kindergarten Dave remembers his life being happy. He stated in the book that, “"My family was the 'Brady Bunch ' of the 1960s. My two brothers and I were blessed with the perfect parents. Our every whim was fulfilled with love and care." But in the years after that he faced unimaginable pain and abuse mentally and physically.

Dave Pelzer’s book, “A Child Called It” (1995), chronicled the unforgettable accounts of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California’s history. The book is an intriguing, yet intimidating journey through the torturing childhood of the author, himself. The child, Dave Pelzer¸ was emotionally and physically tormented by his unstable mother. He was the victim of abuse in his own home, a source of ridicule at his own school, and stripped of all existence. This book left me in suspense as I waited with anticipation for the end of this little boy’s struggle to live. Throughout this paper, I will focus on the events that took place in this book and discuss my personal feelings and the effects this story had on me.

The definition of abuse is when someone uses cruel and violent treatment to negatively affect a person repeatedly. Abuse can come in a variety of ways, such as psychological abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and one of the most common yet overlooked is sexual abuse. In the book A Child Called IT, David Pelzer writes the story of his childhood. A child whose whole life was surrounded by abuse, his mother would beat him and hurt him in such a way that she left him almost dead in several occasions. Sharon olds wrote a series of poems that all seemed to link up together after reading them consecutively. I go back to May 1937 is dealing with changing her existence, Little things is about focusing on enjoying small things,

The famous leader Martin Luther King once said, “Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple.” This quote pretty much summed up the way in which African Americans felt during the 1960’s. They had basically no meaning to life. They were irrelevant. Whites wanted no part in them. This was especially the case in the state of Mississippi. Anne Moody, writer of the autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi explains the importance of the civil rights movement in the state of Mississippi and the influence it had on her life and her viewpoint.

The Child Called “It”, a book by David James Pelzer is a story of Dave's horrible childhood. Born December 29, 1960 in Daly City, California, David's life was wonderful; until, his mother started to drink. David's story is one of mistreatment and perseverance through tough times. Dave is now 56 years old and speaks to troops and other person's as a motivational speaker. It is his life’s goal to help others persevere through tough times.

The giver by Lois Lowry was an interesting book to say the least. In the beginning you are lead to believe these are normal kids and characters, possibly in the future, but in pretty much the same state of mind as our definition of “human” today. As the book goes on, you are slowly let in on details, like the characters can not see color, and that the parents are not biological parents, and everything is organized and decided for the characters in the book. The author did a great job of slowly bringing us into the world of sameness quite the same way the giver slowly brought Jonas into the world of memories. I believe the subject of the book is the Importance of the Individual. As corny as it sounds, we spend much of our life trying to be just like everyone else. I think Lois Lowry wrote this entire novel just to show how horrible it would be if everyone was the same as everyone else.

In the novel A Child Called It, the author Dave Pelzer discussed his courage to survive while growing up in his household. The family was living the perfect traditional western family life. During the early years, the family does things together and the mother was always happy to prepare special meals, outings, and surprises for her family. When the father was working, the mother would take Dave and his brothers on special outings. The family would go on vacations which were fun and memorable for the children.

“A Child Called “It”” is a riveting autobiography about the early childhood of abuse survivor David Pelzer. His story takes place in the year 1973, where he lived in a California home just outside of the San Francisco Bay area in Daly City. A time is recalled where David had the perfect life, with camping trips, special day trips with Mother, and extravagant holiday meals. Everything seems to be perfect, until one day things get out of control.

“Birthday Party” by Katherine Brush uses literary devices such as tone, point of view, diction, and sensory details to achieve her purpose.

I read the book A Child called “It”. I loved this book it really spoke to me in a manner of taking my family life for granted and taking everything I have for the best because in all reality it could be worse. This book takes place in Dale City, California during the 1970’s.

Neil Postman writes, Amusing Ourselves to Death to address a television-based epistemology pollutes public communication and its surrounding landscape, not that it pollutes everything. The book was produced in 1984 in a time where television was an emerging epidemic and other forms of communication that today have taken flight, didn’t exist. It is directed to people who have let television drag them away from their Focus and attention to comprehend as they have lost the ability to bring forth your own knowledge and find meaning. Postman’s purpose to spread the word of this discourse and inform them of how much society is being set back due to the over indulging of television

A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer is an interesting but awfully truthful story of growing up in an abusive childhood. This story is about the author life as a child. He gives first hand experiences of how he felt growing up. Dave was the outsider in his family and was the main victim of his parent’s abuse. This book will have you on the edge of your seat in suspense as you wait and hope for the end of a little boys struggle to live. This book does a wonderful job giving the first hand experiences of what it is truly like to be an abused child. Not all of the book is negative and the story can be viewed as an inspiring journey of how strong one child can be and what he will do to survive.

Throughout many works of literature, characters are described to go through a rite of passage, developing the plot and solving conflicts. A rite of passage is when a character goes through life changes, realizing his/her flaws and maturing as a person. Walter Lee Younger is a man that goes through many different character changes, which cause conflict amongst the other characters. Once he goes through his rite of passage, he is able to fix his flaws and mature. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, characterization is used to portray that one must experience a rite of passage in order to mature.

Throughout the short story, The Birthday, the writer, Samantha Ashenhurst uses the writing tool: Get the name of the dog. To begin with, Samantha begins the story with a descriptive introduction, which gives the reader the ability to visualize the current circumstance’s atmosphere. For instance, the author mentions the specific kind of drink and pizza, the color of the blinds, the exact number of times she pukes, and takes medicine, etc. She describes the background’s setting in details as well. In my opinion, Samantha’s very specific, which portrays how honest she is. This also leads to building the writer’s own distinct voice. Thus, this effectively initiates a connection with the reader psychologically.

In the book ”Amusing ourselves to death” Neil Postman is making an argument about the fact that humans could amuse themselves to death in their lives.Even if when we think of death we think at something terrible,in his book this particular term is asociated with ”amusament” which is a quite unusual asociation of terms.At the beggining of the book the author is making a paralel between Orwell and Huxley.What is quite known about these two is the fact that their ideas were different and the book ”Amusing ourselves to death” states this ideas.What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book,for there whould be no one who would want to read one.Orwell feared those who would deprive