Thursday, February 12, 2009

Outside Reading: Beautiful Children

We are introduced to the Ewing family. Lincoln Ewing and Lorraine Ewing are distraught by the fact that their twelve-year-old child is missing. They have to acknowledge the fact that "nobody can say how long a child will be missing" (Bock 5). It seems to make sense that parents would be worried, but the fact that they question hope means that they don't really see much that would come out of the situation now. Lincoln Ewing searched endlessly for leads that would help find his son, Newell, but was unsuccessful. Thus he pondered "What was left of his son? What did he have?" (Bock 6).

4 comments:

camhoush said...

The fact that a child is missing is a hard one to face. Every human parent has an internal instinct to protect their young from danger, and when a child is lost, parents lose that power, and by doing so, feel alone and powerless. Mrs. Froehlich said that this book was set in Las Vegas, if I'm not mistaken, and when a kid is lost in a big city like that, it could be expecially hard to find them. No parent wants to die before their child, it is an agony not meant for anyone on this earth.

Ngoc/Jimmy said...

I don't think the parents gave up hope. The quote just tells about how they were worried and shows how much they care about their kid and want to find him. Any parent would be filled with worry and sadness to hear about their kid missing. These parents seem to feel that way so its nothing new about them. It also seems they plan to do something about it and do whatever it is necessary in order to find their kid.

Erik P. said...

At no point do the parents actually give up on the idea of finding their son. They just realize how little control they do have over the situation. Unfortunately though, your post is really short and I don't have much to go on.

Callan B. said...

I believe that as parents of a missing child, until you have seen your child's body, you can never give up hope. By doing so you would be essentially giving in. No matter how dire the situation, you couldn't stop looking because that would be saying that you didn't care anymore.