In the heart-rending novel, A Child Called “It” author Dave Pelzer tells the horrendous abuse his own mother made him suffer through at the young ages of four to twelve years old. This story is officially considered non-fiction, an autobiography and a memoir. Before being rescued in 1973, Pelzer lived in Daly City, California with his parents, Stephen Joseph and Catherine Roerva, and his brothers; Richard, Robert, Steven, and Kenneth. In the younger years of his life, his mother was a caring, loving woman who treated him as a real person, and absolutely adored her family, until one day Pelzer remembers she suddenly became monstrous towards only one family member, which was, himself. She would find any reason to punish Dave and not her other children. Although Pelzer’s mother, …show more content…
I never felt as safe and as warm as that moment in time, at the Russian River." (26) The Russian River symbolizes happiness for Pelzer because his family used to vacation there before the mental and physical abuse began. Little did Pelzer know at the time, this would be his last happy memory with his family. This unsettling, but inspirational story of child abuse is full of the many conflicts Pelzer had to endure with his mother. Of all five Pelzer children, only Dave received the abuse from his mother. One of his daily struggles was getting food, which serves as a metaphor for power. Pelzer’s mother controlled him by starving him because she knows he will do anything she asks of him for even the smallest scraps of food. Not only was he starved and beat around, but Pelzer was also told to sit in freezing cold water for hours at a time, forced to eat his own vomit, sleep in the basement on an army cot under the stairs, brutally stabbed, and forced to lay on a burning stove. Second to worst of all, the worst being starved, he would be locked in the bathroom with the concoction of Clorox and ammonia and given a time limit to clean the bathroom with the fumes in the air
Dave Pelzer’s book “A Child Called ‘It’” told his story of growing up in an abusive household. Pelzer’s family at first was just like any other, his parents loved each other and their children and they would do many fun activities together. As time progressed a change happened and his mother began to always punish Pelzer rather than any of the other children. The small punishments soon began to grow and become more and more serious. Soon, Dave’s father and siblings could not help him out of fear that their mother and wife would turn on them. Dave was banished to the garage where he would have to sit at the bottom of the stairs waiting until his mother called him to do his chores. Usually Pelzer would be starved for very long periods of time
A Child Called “It” is a story based on a real life little boy’s tribulations with his mothers shocking abuse. The first part of Dave's life was idyllic in his memory--he says his family was "the Brady Bunch"--a loving mother and father with whom he enjoyed wonderful holidays and a happy trip to the Russian River. Everyone on the outside thought that David’s family was perfect. No one in their neighborhood would have suspected anything was wrong. All that changed when Dave was in first grade. For no known reason, his mother singled him out from his siblings and began abusing him. The abuse began relatively mildly. When he and his brothers did something wrong, Dave was the one to receive punishment--at first simply banishment to the corner of a bedroom. Then, his mother began spending her days watching TV and drinking beer. Easily irritated, she yelled at Dave for the slightest reason, or sometimes for no reason at all. Soon, instead of making him go down to the basement, Mrs. Pelzer smashed Dave's face against the mirror, then made him repeat, over and over, "I'm a bad boy! I'm a bad boy!" He was forced to stand for hours staring into that mirror. Dave's father soon joined The Mother, as David called her, in her drinking. He, too, knew David was a "good boy." He did not join in the abuse, but he did not to stop it, either. David was treated like a slave in his own home. His mother treated him as if he wasn’t even a member of the family like a nobody or an “It”. She first referred to him as, “The Boy, then it quickly changed to It”. Nobody at his school liked him, they called him "Pelzer Smelzer" because his mom never washed his clothes and made him wear the same thing every day. After school, o...
A Child Called It depicts David Pelzer’s life and his incredible will of survival from an “It” to a man. David was emotionally and physically abused up until the age of 12, by his mother (Catherine) who was not only an alcoholic but a master of defamation. The cruelty David endured at the hands of his mother led him to believe he was nothing more than a worthless misfortune; he began to despise himself even more and started to believe that he was the cause of the abuse he suffered.
According to Papalia and Feldman, an estimation of a tragic 905,000 cases were received by child protective services in response to about 3.3 million referrals regarding maltreatment within six million children in the year of 2006. One of the six million children include, David Pelzer. David, in his awe-inspiring novel, A Child Called It, takes the reader upon an unfortunate path as he reflects upon the deplorable life struggles he experienced from the cruel actions of his abusive alcoholic mother. Despite the never ending struggles throughout his daily life at such a young age, David learns to become resilient as time progresses. Keeping in mind that writing this autobiographical
From a very young age, Bone was sexually abused by her step-father, Glen Waddell. Like Bone, Dorothy Allison also suffered abuse from her step-father, starting at the young age of five years-old. During the time of the novel, and until recent years, it was unthinkable to speak of any sort of abuse outside the household. Throughout history, children have been victims of abuse by their parents or other adults, and fo...
The book A Child Called “It” was written by Dave Pelzer. “In the years before I was abused, 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.” These are Dave’s words about his family before he was abused by his mother. Dave Pelzer has experienced a truly extraordinary life. As a child, he was abused by his alcoholic mother, which included physical torture, mental cruelty, and near starvation. Upon Dave's rescue, he was identified as one of the most severely abused children in California's history. At age 12, Dave's teachers risked their careers to notify the authorities and saved his life. Upon Dave's removal, he was made a ward of the court and placed in foster care until he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at age 18. As a young adult Dave was determined to better himself--no matter what the odds.
This story speaks of a married woman who fell in love with a man who was not her husband. She bore this man a child and realized that she could not live without him. In the event, she decides to leave her husband to be with the child’s father. However, there is only one problem and that is that she has two other children by her husband. She has a daughter who is 9 years old and is very mature for her age, and a darling son who is 5 years old. As she leaves to restart her life again with this other man, the 5 year old son is left behind to stay with his dad, and the little girl is tragically killed by a pack of wolves. The little boy is devastated by his mom’s decision to leave him behind. He is constantly haunted by dreams and images that come to his mind surrounding his mother’s...
Dave Pelzer’s book, “A Child Called It” (1995), discussed unforgettable accounts of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California’s history. The book is a captivating, yet intimidating journey through the torturing childhood of the author, himself. The child, David (Dave) Pelzer¸ was emotionally and physically tormented by his mother who was unstable and addicted to alcohol. 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
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
In Night, he informs his reader of many examples on how a myriad of good people turn into brutes. They see horrific actions, therefore, they cannot help by becoming a brute. They experience their innocent family members being burned alive, innocent people dieing from starvation due to a minuscule proportion of food, and innocent people going to take a shower and not coming out because truly, it is a gas chamber and all f...
Jim's father Steve and his mine layer were sent off to fight in World War Two. For the next three years Jim's mother Clara, was forced to raise Jim with only the help of sympathizing relatives who believed in ideas such as "Children should be seen and not heard ... Ignore something unpleasant and it will go away... "(Hopkins, Sugerman 5).
Dave Pelzer is the survivor of the third worst case of child abuse in California's history. Dave grew up with his two brothers and two parents. Catherine, Dave's mother, loved to cook exotic meals for her family and decorate their home in creative and imaginative ways each holiday season. She was full of energy, often taking her kids on tours of downtown San Francisco while her husband was at work as a fire fighter, exposing them to Golden Gate Park and Chinatown. Once, while on a family camping trip, young Dave was watching the sunset when he felt his mother embrace him from behind and watch the sunset with him over his shoulder. "I never felt as safe and warm as at that moment in time," he recalls.
Sandy Wilson, the author of Daddy’s Apprentice: incest, corruption, and betrayal: a survivor’s story, was the victim of not only sexual abuse but physical and emotional abuse as well, in addition to being a product of incest. Sandy Wilson’s story began when she was about six years old when her birth father returns home from incarceration, and spans into her late teens. Her father returning home from prison was her first time meeting him, as she was wondered what he looked like after hearing that he would be released (Wilson, 2000, p. 8). Not only was her relationship with her father non-existent, her relationship with her birth mother was as well since she was for most of her young life, cared for by her grandmother and grandfather. When she was told that her birth mother coming to visit she says, “…I wish my mother wouldn’t visit. I never know what to call her so I don’t all her anything. Not her name, Kristen. Not mother. Not anything (Wilson, 2000, p. 4).” This quote essentially demonstrated the relationship between Sandy and her mother as one that is nonexistent even though Sandy recognizes Kristen as her birth mother.
One is struck by the extreme cruelty and hardship he faced while only an emotionally vulnerable child and adolescent. As Wright generalizes his own experiences to show how the society functioned at the time, one may wonder how many individuals were crushed by similar circumstances.
In the poem, “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake, the author attempts to educate the reader about the horrors experienced by young children who are forced into labor at an early age cleaning chimneys for the wealthy. The poem begins with a young boy who has lost his mother but has no time to properly grieve because his father has sold him into a life of filth and despair. The child weeps not only for the loss of his mother and father’s betrayal, but also for the loss of his childhood and innocence. Blake uses poetry in an attempt to provoke outrage over the inhumane and dangerous practice of exploiting children and attempts to shine a light on the plight of the children by appealing to the reader’s conscience in order to free the children from their nightmare existence. Right away in the first lines of the poem we learn through the child narrator that his life is about to change dramatically for the worse.