"she wrote the name lemon on her door, and Daddy and i punished her for writing on the walls. Now her room is lemon everything-stickers and erasers and posters and bubble gum! I don't know why she chose this name" (pg43). "Home sucks, daddy broke, my hair-do jesse doll and i hate him" (pg104). I think these lines clearly indicate that Benjamin's sister also has similar but less sever porblem. "Hanna really likes him(Dr. Dysan) now because he said it was fine for her to play with her hair do jessie doll." it means they were trying to get medical help from Dr. Dysan for Hanna. Both kids are living in same environment with same parents and have similar problems. Moreover, there is more than enough evidence in the novel which indicate that their parents have very high expectations from their kids but they don't seem to be very caring. The parents pay no attention to the interest of their kids. I think it is a natural tendency of a child to look outside whatever he or she need if they are not able to get it from the people they are close to. it is true in case of Benjamin and his sister. Benjamin's problem could be handled in much better way. he was improving while he was with Eliot in the camp. There were other things which were occupying his time and he was getting interested in lot of other activities. I believe the better way would be to replace his obsesion with some other more intersting things like the ones he did at the camp.
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These are the kind of things you can speculate on in your paper. For example, everything that you brought up here is not found so much "in" the letters as "between" them. You might want to think about the letters from the parents as "lies"---maybe not conscious ones---an attempt to cover over, not admit, repress any sign of "trouble." You could also think about what kind of things might be considered "trouble" by the Shermans, things not necessarily related to Benjamin and Hannah, or childhood behavior not as conventionally "odd" as Benjamins. You could also thing about how the letters, although they want to banish knowledge of these things, end up including them in indirect ways...(the return of the repressed)
ReplyDeleteI picked up on this too in the reading, it kinda makes you wonder though, what would Dyson pick up on if Benjamin's parents were the ones laying on the leather couch...I feel as though his camp and his letters were better therapeudically speaking for Benjamin rather than his parent's method.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing you can think about for your paper is the way that all the authority figures (with maybe the except of Dave) see Benjamin in "isolation:" as an individual with a problem "inside him," rather than as a person reacting to different situations outside of himself...
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