Tainted Futures

This week we wrote our second essay based on our books that we've read for our Inquiry Project. While this essay was a little bit harder to write than my first one on The Scarlet Letter, I really think that my essay turned out well. My question was "How are people changed through their relationships with others?" and the book I wrote my essay on today was Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. The book follows a young girl named Ruth Ann Boatwright, or Bone, through her childhood in South Carolina in the mid 1950's. She was born to her unwed mother at the age of 15. From birth, she was labeled an illegitimate bastard and her mother constantly fought to make sure Bone thought better of herself. However, nothing Bone's mother could do would protect her from the physical and sexual abuse of Bone's stepfather, Daddy Glen. I wrote my essay about how the abuse transforms Bone from a healthy little girl who was not affected by her harsh label, into a self-loathing young adult who engages in several unhealthy habits and lifestyles in search of the love she does not get in her home life. I think that my essay turned out really powerful because I ended it with a question. "How does a young girl escape the abuse of her stepfather without forcing herself to maintain a victim everyday for the rest of her life and poisoning her own happiness?" While the wording of the question is specific to the book, I think that this is a really relevant question to a lot of people. Although hopefully Bone's experiences of abuse are not the kind that most people go through, I think that most people have been in some sort of situation where they blame themselves for something that is not their fault. My essay, in short, asks how do we go through life, and often horrible experiences, without tainting all of our good experiences to come?