A Child Called "It" Response #2

In The Child Called "It" by David Pelzer, the author/main character describes his "fight for food". While reading this book, i noticed that Mother constantly taunts David with food. She gives him  unmeetable time limits to complete his chores and if he doesn't finish on time, he won't get any food. On "good days" he would sometimes be given the leftover scraps of his brother's cereal for breakfast. However, more often than  not, David goes to school hungry. Because of this, he begins stealing food from school. He starts off taking little snacks from his classmate's lunch boxes during recess. Unfortunately, teachers eventually find out and notify Mother. David was severely punished and beaten for his actions, but he felt like stealing was his only way of getting food in order to survive. Once, he takes a frozen lunch from his school and eats every morsel of it in the bathroom. He is very proud of feeding himself, but Mother finds out at has him perform a horrible task. She makes Dave puke into the toilet, scoops the contents into a bowl, and makes him re-eat his digested meal.

What was discussed during our disscussion was if Davids mom didn't want him to steal, why doesn't she feed him? I think the answer to this is because she likes to feel like she has ultimate control over everything. She probably enjoys feeling like she decides when and what David eats and when he goes against her will by getting food for herself, she decides he "deserves" to be punished. However, this is no excuse for the way this horrible woman treats her son. What she does is horrible and disgusting.

Another topic we discussed this week is how much of a coward David's dad is. One part in this book that really stuck out to me was in the chapter titled "The Accident". One night Mother is drunk and she has a knife in her hand. Her youngest son, Russle is also swinging on her leg. On "accident" (according to David) mother throws the knife at him and it strikes him in the stomach. When David wakes up, he is in the bathroom and his mom is gently placing gauze around his wound. However, she doesn't take him to the hospital and when she is done wrapping his cut, she tells him that he has 10 more minutes to finish the dishes. When David tells his dad that his mother stabbed him, the only thing he says is "Just finish the dishes before you irritated her even more!"

I think the mother has control on pretty much everyone in her house, including her husband. However, Davids dad is a firefighter. there is no excuse on why he couldn't get help to save his child. I talked about this in my last blog post and my view on his still hasn't changed. David's dad is a whimp and a loser.