I read the book A Child called "It" by David Pelzer. The purpose of the text was to show that courage only gets you so far. Throughout the book, Dave is heated, starved, abandoned, and much more, but he still has the courage to survive. One way Dave has Courage is using strategies to delay his moms punishments. In the book he quotes, "After I finished, I felt as though I had won the Olympic Marathon. I was so proud for beating Mother at her own game."(pg. 62)
Dave is forced to drink soap but instead he found a way to not do it so therefor he is proud at himself. This quote is related back to the theme because he still went through an amount of pain but he made it easier to bare by having courage.
Another example of how courage gets you only so far is when the mom tried to make him swallow ammonia, but instead he moved his head from side to side to make his mom spill most of it. In the book he says, " She had to pry my mouth open, by thrashing my head from side to side, I was able to make her spill most of the cleaner onto the floor." (pg. 88) This shows how his courage helped him decrease the punishment he was getting but he only got so far because he still had to swallow the cleaner.
Also in the book he used he courage to delay his mom from burning him on the stove. Dave states, "I stood against the wall and began to whimper until I realized that I had beaten her. I had bought a few precious minutes. I had used my head to survive. For the fist time I had won." (pg. 34) Even though he was beaten instead of burned he still got little punishment because he used his courage to ease the punishments and beatings.
Lastly, after the mom stabbed Dave he refused to let the wound get to him. In the text he states, " I willed the wound to heal. Somehow I knew it would. I felt proud of myself." (pg. 55) This shows that his courage and bravery wouldn't let him back down. Dave did all of these tactics to ease all the pain he was going through instead of giving in.
Overall, there are many examples of courage only getting you so far in the book A Child Called "It". Dave Pelzer showed that even when your'e young, you can still do the right and know how to take care of yourself.
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