I just finished reading the book Small as an Elephant. It's a really good book about a boy who's mom is mentally ill and sometimes leaves him alone wherever they happen to be, often for days on end. The particular time that leads to the rest of the book is when the two of them are camping in Maine and his mom just leaves in the middle of the night.
Throughout the book Jack thinks about whether or not he wants to forgive his mother for what she did to him. At first he has no doubts about it and is completely sure he wants to go back to her. I think that he has grown up thinking that whatever his mom says is right because he loves her so much, but he has no judgement of when to say that she needs to get some help and he needs to be able to stay with someone else.
Later into the book, as he has been having to live on his own and survive with what he can find, Jack starts to realize that he should let himself be angry at his mom, or at least want to turn himself in and get her some help. Just like I predicted when I started reading, he never really gave in and felt any resentment or loss of trust in his mom, but he ended up realizing that she couldn't take care of him. I think that when he realized that his grandmother wasn't trying to take him away from his mother, but that she was just there to care for him and love him, he was also able to realize that there were so many people in the world who cared about him and that it wasn't him and his mom against everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment