FratFiles

• Save Paper

Judith Guest's novel, Ordinary People, is quite a unique story in that it has two protagonists. It alternates between the Conrad's story and Calvin's, his father. Although they seem interrelated, especially at the beginning, they are more like two completely different stories which happen to occasionally affect one another before splitting off and going their own ways once more. Conrad's main concern seems to be his emotional time bomb, always threatening to blow but never knowing when it's going to happen and drag him back into his depressed and suicidal state. Calvin's story seems at first to be all about trying to control Conrad's emotional problems, but it gradually becomes a fight to simply keep the family together. As the story progresses, he gets into more arguments with his wife, Beth, about how to deal with the past and Conrad's emotional state. Calvin believes the family should talk through their problems whereas Beth believes that the family should simply move on and......

View the rest of this paper...

Approximate Word Count: 2260
Approximate Pages: 10 (250 words per double-spaced page)

Similar Essays

1. Ordinary People Aren't Ordinary
   

   Ordinary People aren't ordinary The Jarrett's have always believed themselves to be ordinary people, but after their firstborn son, Jordan "Buck" Jarrett drowns and their second

2. Ordinary People
   

   Ordinary People Ordinary People by Judith Guest is the story of a dysfunctional family who relate to one another through a series of extensive defense mechanisms, i.e. an

3. Ordinary People
   

   Ordinary People "Why does the world go on when things like this happen?", is a quote by Gerda Weissman Klein. This means that unfortunately, incidents that don't always have a

4. Ordinary People Vs. The Catche
   

   Ordinary People Vs. The Catche Ordinary People Vs. The Catcher in the Rye In this paper I intend to show how the loss of a brother can have the same effects on two different

5. Ordinary People
   

   Ordinary People The definition of a sense of identity is the condition of being oneself and not another. In Ordinary People, Judith Guest refers to Conrad Jarrett as "A newborn