Family Importane

ЃgThe family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.Ѓh

Charles Caleb Colton

What does the existence of ЃefamilyЃf mean to you? To me, family is the group of people who will be by my side through out my entire life. They are the people who cherish myself and turn to me when everything is going wrong. My parents show me how to do the most important things in life which are to love and to be loved. They also give me the chance to do whatever I choose in life without making me do what they want me to. My brother always shows he is interested in everything as well as I do. Family is what will always be by my side and I feel that they deserve the most credit for forming the person who to care, to love, and to fight. The novels The Outsiders and The lost boy, the short story The Left Foot and the poem On Children, all are in the situation of individuals forming their identity while growing up in different families. In The Outsiders, the main character grows up without parents so his family becomes only his two brothers; in the novel The Lost Boy an extremely abused boy finds his strength with new family; in the short story My Left Foot the boy struggles for his disability but successes with a huge support from his family; in the poem On Children the independency of child is narrated ironically. Therefore by examining the works from four different perspectives, it will be revealed that family is something which builds the most important value and identity in individuals.

First of all, in order to gain better understanding of the themes of these works, it is necessary to examine the novel The Outsiders from a historical point of view.Ѓ@Susan Eloise Hinton, the author of The Outside, was born in 1948 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she was raised. Her writing style in this novel is very straightforward as it was written when Hinton was only sixteen years old. I suppose that when she wrote the novel, she was also facing the problems which are referred in the novel. Poverty, rejection, violence, alcohol, drug abuse and family conflict, those are often what teenagers confront in a severe society. Interestingly major issues among teenagers have not changed over the time. Without parents, the characters developed their maturities through the story over solving each problem. It is important to know that such maturity can never be built without existences of siblings, namely a family.

By way of comparison, Dave Pelzer, the author of The Lost Boy was born in 1960 and grew up in a middle-class of San Francisco. He had experienced extraordinary life. As a child, he endured the horrors of child abuse, which included physical pain, mental cruelty, and frequent starvation. At age 12, Dave was placed in foster care until he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at age 18. The story is an entirely true story written by the author himself. According to Child Abuse Network Center, the amount of child abuse is increasing each year. Although it was less in the past, the significance of the effect that child abuse causes, has not changed over years. Here again, family is what a person receives the largest effect and is something that each individual should honor about being a member of their own family. This is why Dave was so miserably poor that he grew up in a family which he couldnЃft honor.

The author of My Left Foot, Christy Brown, was born in Crumlin, Dublin, in 1932 as one of thirteen children. He suffered from cerebral palsy and was considered mentally disabled until he snatched a piece of chalk from his sister with his left foot. During this time people have struggled under severe economic depression that exploded in 1930Ѓfs in Ireland. Family of Christy Brown was not an exceptional, so the family struggled with poverty. However their family strength was very strong as Christy remarks ЃgMy motherЃfs faith in him and his familyЃfs love allowed me to succeedЃh. I believe that wealth has no role in strengthening the ties between family members.

Khalil Gibran, the poet who wrote the poem On Children, was born on January 6, 1883, to the Gibran family in Bsharri, a mountainous area in Northern Lebanon. The family came from a high-status religious background. He did not receive any formal education. Gibrans' family was left homeless when his father was arrested for tax evasion. The strong-willed mother decided that the family should immigrate to the U.S., for seeking a better life. The poem On Children is actually one of the works in a book called Prophet which was published in 1920Ѓfs. His work contains a sort of existential or spiritual point to make. When I first read this poem I received an impression of ironically but persuasive atmosphere. Such jagged background of GibranЃfs life must have affected to create such spiritually convincing work.

From a social perspective, the fact that there are terms ЃeGreaserЃf and ЃeSocsЃf to differentiate social class of people proves unfairness of the society at that time and an existence of bias. However I strongly feel that Hinton suggests these differences in social class do not necessarily make natural enemies of the two groups. The Greasers and Socs share some things in common. Cherry, a Soc, and Ponyboy, a Greaser, discuss their common interests in literature, popular music and sunsets. Their pleasant conversation shows us that such points in common can fill in the gap between the rich and the poor. Also their intention of unification with each other which refers as a family eventually tells us how the ЃefamilyЃf is playing an important role in their lives.

In 1974, a year after DaveЃfs rescue, the California government took a more aggressive role for the protection of youth. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act were passed. It set standards for managing and identifying child abuse. I consider that the reason why Dave lived so long in such horrible conditions is an unforgivable failure of those adults around him. Only if his parents had been able to recognize their inanity, Dave could have had a much better life. The great effect of family is considerably remarked at this point.

My Left Foot is a great presentation of life as a differently-abled person. ChristyЃfs own writing let us know the torment, hardship and emptiness of the life as a victim of disabled. He is a rare case of becoming possible to express his thoughts while suffering from cerebral palsy. Therefore his story is very persuasive. Readers are drugged

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