Lullabies For Little Criminals Character Analysis
One-third of Canadians have experienced some form of child abuse when they were young whether physical, emotional or viewing it happen. In the novel, lullabies for little criminals by Heather O’Neill, and the films Gardens of the Night and Gracie’s Choice, there are many themes of abuse; the reader/viewer becomes exposed to the extent of the abuse and its resulting behaviour years later. Drugs are used as a symbol of each character’s unhappiness, while the more unhappy a person is, the more drugs they will abuse. Parental decisions are a huge factor into a child’s happiness, and as well as their own decisions, parents are able to influence their children into believing that certain lifestyles are better than others and while children are young,
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Rose used sex as a way to validate her feelings of loneliness caused by the disappearance of her mother. Likewise, Baby’s father was never around, whether in rehab or away on a trip, Baby would spend her time with a thirty year old man, Alphonse, who started to pimp Baby out to various other men. Baby would return home to Alphonse because she missed being around a man. Men and women are in unhealthy relations because they are raised in homes where they are ignored or abused by their parents and they grow to expect intimate relationships to be the same way. To explain, in Lullabies for Little Criminals, Baby talks about her sexual encounters with Alphonse. The guilt she felt and the sadness that followed are evident when she says, “I wasn’t getting into the sex at all . So I had to [...] think about dirty ugly things [...] that made me come [...] and I felt lousy for a few minutes. I lay there as if I had been shot.” (O’Neill, 213). It is evident that the sex that she is trying to use to cope has become a unhealthy ritual where she needs to think about unhappy occurrences. She follows by saying, “my favourite part of sex was afterward. We lay on the bed after making love and he just gazed at me and marveled at my naked body”. It is evident by Baby’s actions that sex is used to help people feel closer to another body. By prostituting in Gardens of the Night, sleeping without protection at an early age in Gracie’s Choice, and staying with Alphonse in Lullabies for Little Criminals, it is proven that sex is used as validation to make people less
Rose used sex as a way to validate her feelings of loneliness caused by the disappearance of her mother. Likewise, Baby’s father was never around, whether in rehab or away on a trip, Baby would spend her time with a thirty year old man, Alphonse, who started to pimp Baby out to various other men. Baby would return home to Alphonse because she missed being around a man. Men and women are in unhealthy relations because they are raised in homes where they are ignored or abused by their parents and they grow to expect intimate relationships to be the same way. To explain, in Lullabies for Little Criminals, Baby talks about her sexual encounters with Alphonse. The guilt she felt and the sadness that followed are evident when she says, “I wasn’t getting into the sex at all . So I had to [...] think about dirty ugly things [...] that made me come [...] and I felt lousy for a few minutes. I lay there as if I had been shot.” (O’Neill, 213). It is evident that the sex that she is trying to use to cope has become a unhealthy ritual where she needs to think about unhappy occurrences. She follows by saying, “my favourite part of sex was afterward. We lay on the bed after making love and he just gazed at me and marveled at my naked body”. It is evident by Baby’s actions that sex is used to help people feel closer to another body. By prostituting in Gardens of the Night, sleeping without protection at an early age in Gracie’s Choice, and staying with Alphonse in Lullabies for Little Criminals, it is proven that sex is used as validation to make people less