Point of View of David

Author's Note: This is a point of view essay on the book, A Child Called it by Dave Pelzer. I was trying to work on having strong body paragraphs so I only wrote 2 because I wanted to see if I could get a 10 in "body paragraphs".  

In A Child Called it, a young boy is being abused by his mother.  The father is afraid to stand up to the mother, because he does not want to get abused either.  The name of the little boy is David, but the mother refers to him as "it".  She has 2 other sons, but for some reason, she likes to pick on David.  The story is written in David's point of view.  From this perspective, a lot of events and characters are described in a way that creates the reader to feel bad for David because he is being very abused and neglected. David's father feels very bad for him, but he is too much of a coward to say or do anything.  When young David gets thrown down the stairs, the father tries to yell at the mother, but she just yells back and storms out of the room.  "Its" brothers, are also afraid to stand up to their mother because they don't want to get awful punishments along with "it".

From David's point of view, the reader feels sympathy and compassion.  When David is forced to eat his own feces, the reader feels disgusted, but at the same time they felt bad for him because he did nothing wrong and he was getting treated this way.  In the mothers perspective, David is the most annoying, brattiest, rudest, disgusting child there is out there.  She treats him poorly because she doesn't know how to take her anger out on anything else but him.  When I was reading this book, I felt as though David was getting treated this way because his mother was always drinking.  My opinion on the mothers perspective; well I could never feel that way about a little innocent boy.  She just doesn't get how to handle bad situations when they occur.  And yeah, I mean David eventually learned to stand up for himself when he got older and stronger, but if he never got the opportunity, he maybe wouldn't be alive today.

 On the contrary, the reader would feel a lot differently about David if they were put in the perspective of his mother.  If you were her, you would be fed up with his stealing and lying too.  Well, maybe if you were drunk all the time like she was.  The reader might feel anger, zero patience, and the lack of love for this child.  I personally, would always love and care for my child no matter the circumstance.  If the novel was written in the dad's point of view,  you would feel shy and empty inside because you have no guts to fill it.  If If the reader was in the dad's point f view, they would be saying, "Oh, I can't stand up to her, she'll kick me out of the house".  I think that the dad needs to put his big boy pants on and stand up for what's right.  He needs to tell off his wife and lay down the lay in the house and tell everyone who's boss. 

  As you can see, the point of view of a story makes the reader only see one side of the story.  Which in this case, the reader can only see David's point of view.  In A Child Called It, the narrator's perspective makes the reader feel sorrow.  I think that in this story the author was trying to send a message across. What message I got from David's perspective is, "Be strong, stay strong, and MOVE OUT and go live with your dad".  I can't have a message from the mom's perspective because it was only written in David's point of view, and I would never be able to think/act like her.  Just remember, don't take things for granted because there will always be someone who has lesser than you!