Unsupervised Children In Strays By Mark Richard

1035 Words3 Pages

The author of the story “Strays”, Mark Richard, starts off with the main characters, the two brothers, lying in their beds listening to the sound of stray dogs beneath the floorboards, scratching their flee infested backs, and licking the water leaking from the pipes. The mother of the children runs off into the cornfields while the father chases after her. The father’s brother, Uncle Trash, comes to babysit the boys and ends up scamming the boys out of everything they own. The parents still haven not returned, and when Uncle Trash returns after a night of heavy drinking the boys notice he was beaten up and his truck is gone. Later in the story while the adults are out of the house, the two brothers caught one of the stray dogs and sprayed …show more content…

In the beginning, the mother leaves the house and runs off into the cornfields near the house. The father asks his brother to babysit the children while he runs after his wife. Uncle Trash is the father’s brother; he comes to watch the boys while the father runs after the wife. While both parents are gone, the children are not exactly alone. Uncle Trash is rarely with the boys throughout the story, he is always leaving to go to the bar and gamble. This way in the story, the boys are always alone and can do whatever they want. This freedom often leads to bad experiences when left in the hands of children. The boys in the story did not get into trouble till the end of the story, in the mean time they dug holes in the yard and played with toy metal cars until the uncle returned sometimes days later. Unsupervised children can be very dangerous; they can hurt themselves or others. “Uncle Trash said the man who won the card game went ahead and beat up Uncle Trash on purpose anyway”. For the time being Uncle Trash is their role model. He is clearly a bad role model judging from this line in the story. This relates to the reality side of things, where children grow up with parents who are just like Uncle Trash. The author tries relating scenarios from the story to life to get the audience to understand the society they live in. Another aspect of unsupervised children would be abandonment, which the boys …show more content…

When the parents run off without them and never come back for a long time, and when Uncle Trash scams the boys out of everything they own and takes off for days at a time, then sells their belongings and buys cigars and alcohol with the money he made. Growing up being forgotten about can have serious, long lasting effects on children. The author tries to portray the boys as being forgotten so the audience reading will understand that it is a serious issue. “During the knocking down nobody notices our mother. She is a flatfooted running rustle through the corn all burned up by the summer sun”. At the end of the story the mother finally returns to see her house burned down by the sons she left in the hands of their drunken

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