I definitely feel pity for Kyle, but Kyle is also someone I strive to be more like. Kyle does not have a mutual recognition relationship with this parents, which would be extremely hard for a teenager. His parents have all these rules for him, which may be just trying to keep him out of danger, but they're over the top and excessive. For example, not being able to go outside when a stranger is in the neighborhood? That's absurd! I don't know how Kyle has lived such a sheltered life without going crazy before Alison is kidnapped.
Before the very end of the story, Kyle is the hero that many seek to be. He goes against everything he has been taught is right, to do what he knows is the right thing. It is unclear if at the end of the story Kyle ends up throwing the rock at Melvin's head, but even if he did I can't blame Kyle. His whole life it doesn't seem as though he has done a single thing wrong. He obeys his parents insane rules and I blame his parents for him maybe going crazy on Melvin. If they did not shelter their child but mutually recognized him, Kyle would not have felt the need to hurt Melvin after Alison escaped.
Before the very end of the story, Kyle is the hero that many seek to be. He goes against everything he has been taught is right, to do what he knows is the right thing. It is unclear if at the end of the story Kyle ends up throwing the rock at Melvin's head, but even if he did I can't blame Kyle. His whole life it doesn't seem as though he has done a single thing wrong. He obeys his parents insane rules and I blame his parents for him maybe going crazy on Melvin. If they did not shelter their child but mutually recognized him, Kyle would not have felt the need to hurt Melvin after Alison escaped.
I always thought that Kyle did end up bringing the geode down on Melvin's head, and I thought that that was just the logical conclusion for the situation, because Kyle needed to make absolutely sure that the kidnapper was not going to get back up. However, now that you make the point that his actions could have been affected by his relationship with his parents, I think that the final blow could have been coaxed out by his bottled up frustration with his parents. It might have functioned as a stress relief for him. This is similar to why Abner Snopes burns the barns, due to his bottled up frustration with his employer.
ReplyDeleteI think there are a lot of reasons Kyle was going to/actually did, depending on how you interpret it, kill Melvin with the geode. I guess his parents could be one reason, and he's definitely thinking of them throughout all his rule-breaking (and his entire POV section, really.) Actually, now that I check, the last three lines when he's about to bring the geode down are his imaginary-parent-voices saying "whoa, slow down" and he says "no, I'm the boss of me," so... yeah.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I wouldn't expect some kid trying to save a girl from a kidnapper to be thinking straight in the heat of the moment. As a reader you realize the kidnapper poses pretty much no threat then, but Kyle probably doesn't.
I think that Kyle may have gone crazy before the attack in reality. As he is walking through the house and accidentally breaking the rules his mind is fighting against him and yelling at him. This made me originally thinking that the way his parents treated him made Kyle internalize everything and seem not capable of being verbal and having discussions that he wanted with his parents. Instead he imagines the conversations in his mind and builds frustration and worry. His violence towards Melvin is just an extreme physical representation of the crazy that has already manifested in his mind.
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