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Killing Lizards

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Killing Lizards

The short story was published in 1981 and takes place in an English family who have migrated to Africa and lived there for to years.

All children seek acceptance, attention and love through their childhood. If a child does not receive acceptance, attention or love, then how can they find the confidence to be them selves? They will be stuck in an insecure world, where they have no faith in them selves and no real identity. How can the children know if they have done something good or bad if no one pays attention or reacts to what they have achieved? These three adjectives are a must to a successful upbringing. Through the story “Killing Lizards” The principal character, Gavin, never achieves the acceptance, attention or love that he is really in need of.

Fantasy vs. reality
Gavin lives in Africa with his family, his sister is named Amanda and goes to a boarding school in England. He misses Amanda a lot, but when she came back to visit, she was a changed girl, more woman than girl. A woman that would rather go shopping with her mother. Than play with her little brother. A sudden solidarity had appeared between his mother and Amanda, and his father and him self were denied access to be apart of it. On that account Gavin started hating Amanda for being mature and requiring all his mothers time during her visit. As a result Gavin started to fantasize about Amanda being dead, how he would be the only child and how that would change everything. But strangely, the thought it’s redesigned in his dreams. In Gavin’s dreams his father and Amanda dies in a car accident. Thereafter his mother and him self moves back to England and Gavin help’s his mother through the horrendous grief and sorrow and there by he becomes the hero. He becomes the saviour, the one who helped his mother, when she was most vulnerable.

Absentminded woman and a man with a

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