Richard is most definitely NOT a bad boy. How can an innocent young child be expected to be naturally evil? No, Richard wasn't born bad, he just grew up in an environment where bad words and mischief was exploited. Young children absorb everything and anything taught to them, not realizing that it's bad or not. Richard caused so much monkey business because he learned it from society, not because he wanted to harm others.
Everywhere around him is violence. It is exposed through other children, irresponsible adults, and even his family. For every wrongdoing, he is beaten or repremanded so harshly that he comes to fear everything around him. When he accidentally sets the house on fire, instead of worrying about the rest of the family, his initial thought is to hide from his mother thinking that she "must not find me and whip me for what I had done [...] it was all an accident" (5).
The people in the saloon also advertise bad behavior to Richard. Because of them, profanity and even alcohal was exposed to Richard at an extremely tender age. Even though Richard protested to go inside the saloon, he was dragged inside and forced to be drunk. The men from the saloon merely considered making Richard drunk a "sport[,] urging [him] to repeat obscenities."
Thus, it is no surprise that Richard, let alone any other child who lived in that sort of negative environment, was prone to bad behavior. (A pity indeed for such an intelligent young boy...)
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5 comments:
It is surprising that with such horrible adult role models Richard was able to survie his childhood at all! I feel that your example of the saloon and the men making him get drunk for sport supports your ideas quite well.
hahah well richard was happy to take the alchohol though... i love how emapatize you are...richard was NOT a bad boy...lol
* emphatic? woww i cant spell
luv ya much! muah<3
This is good Hailey except organize your thoughts a bit more. I strongly agree with what you say about young children learning through hands-on experience. Also I like your word choice, for example "monkey buisness".
Hailey, I completely agree with you that Richard is in fact, not a bad boy. He learnes that violence can solve any problem from a young age. This causes Richard to solve his conflicts through violence. Richard is never told why he is being punished, so he thinks that any dispute is an excuse to use violence.
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