Autumn Binford
Mrs. Hacker
Honors English 9
Imagine growing up in an unsafe and unloved environment, and you don’t know if you will wake up the next day alive. Imagine not being allowed to do anything, own anything, or play with anyone pretty much your entire childhood. Imagine if no matter what you do, you would just get knocked down and hurt for doing it, and no matter what you do, it’s never good enough. Imagine having to fight to survive and live another day. Imagine your own mother not loving you and not even calling you by your own name, just calling you “it”. Instead of making you feel special, she would make you feel worthless and unloved. In the book A Child Called It, all those things happened to David Pelzer, who fought against his abusive mother so he could live another day, and basically survive her wrath. The theme of this book is survival, David fought against his mother to survive by defeating her games, surviving starvation, and surviving harsh beatings from her.
David’s mother would always play her “games” with him. She would lock him into the bathroom for hours with a bucket of ammonia and Clorox mixed together. The solution would turn in to a white cloud like gas. This gas would fill the air and burn David’s throat as he inhaled the toxic solution. Also she would make David do a lot of tasks in a short period of time, and if he finished quick enough then he would be able to have food, but sometimes if he made the time limit then she would only give him a couple of seconds to eat. Another thing she did to him was make him sleep in the garage on an old army cot, and he said “Sometimes at night I would wake up and try to imagine I was a real person, sleeping under a warm electric blanket, knowing I was safe and that somebody loved me. My imagination worked for a while, but the cold nights always brought me back to my reality. I knew no one could help me. Not my teachers, my so-called brothers or even my father. I was on my own, and every night I prayed to God that I could be strong both in body and soul.” This relates to survival, because he realized that no one could help him and he had to survive on his own.
David’s mother would also starve him and not let him eat anything for days at a time. One time when she starved David, he stole from the school and ate his food in the bathroom. Unfortunately she knew that he had stolen food, so she stuck her fingers down his throat to make him throw up into the toilet. After she had examined all of David’s stolen food, she made him clean his puke out of the toilet to show to his dad. When David’s dad saw the puke, he said, “you were a bad boy, you shouldn’t have stolen that food.” his mother, who was happy that his father had yelled at him like she wanted, made him eat all of his already digested food. Earlier in the book, David said, “I loved it when dad was home. It meant no beatings, mirror treatments or long searches for her missing things. Father became my protector.” This quote shows that David’s dad was his protector, and now his protector is starting to go away.
David’s mother would always beat him and torture him. She would always make him sit in a prisoner of war position which is basically siting on the cold garage floor or on rocks outside, with his knees on his chest and his hands behind his back and his head back. Also she would make him lay in freezing cold water for hours. A couple of times she made David lay on the stove naked while she turned the burner on high, burning David’s back. One time she was threatening to kill David with a knife when she was drunk, and she stabbed him in his stomach. One day David said, “That day I vowed to myself that I would never, ever again give that bitch the satisfaction of hearing me beg her to stop beating me.” Another thing that David said was, “I wanted to show that Bitch that she could beat me only if I died, and I was determined not to give in, even to death. These quote’s show that David is starting to take action to survive his mother’s torture.
David Spent his entire childhood surviving from his mother. Finally on March 5th, 1973, he won. David finally survived his mother’s harsh beatings, he defeated all of her games, and he survived weeks of starvation. David finally got away from his mother with the help of his school nurse who would check on all of his bruises and scars every day, the principal who sort of followed David’s story and helped him, and with the help of all his teachers.