The Journey Of Fatherhood In Rick Bragg's Childhood

Rick Bragg had a complicated and hard life. If he wanted something in life he had to work for it or just go without because his family was not wealthy at all. Rick tells about how his mother would starve herself just to make sure him and his brothers wouldn’t go without. Like many of the families during this time Rick Bragg didn’t have a lot of luxurious things like we do now. He would get treated differently at school by the teachers because they didn’t think he would ever graduate high school and become a successful man that he did. Rick Bragg’s journey in his career helps him to cope with the hardships, humiliations, and struggles of his childhood.
When Rick Bragg was growing up he had learned that ever since his dad came back from his tour in the Korean War that his dad was very disturbed of what he had been through during the war. His dad would sit there and drink all the time and just to run away from the horrifying memories of the Korean War. His father had drunk so much that his father’s liver could take it anymore and he was dying from the years of drinking.
Rick tells us about how “all I wanted was a simple acknowledgement that he was wrong or least too drunk to notice that he left his pretty wife and sons alone again and again, with no food, no money, no way to get any short of begging…” (pg.12). Rick just wanted his dad to realize that he did them wrong by leaving them and not taking care of them like a dad should have done. Even though he didn’t get the apology that he deserved and needed from his father this didn’t stop him from becoming a better person for