To my mind this book written by Doris Lessing is very difficult to understand. “The Fifth Child” is a very controversial story. It is about a young couple and its five children. Harriet and David want to have a big family and everything is perfect. They live happily together although they have financial difficulties. family life is rather busy but everything goes its way until Ben – the fifth child – is born. Ben has a very aggressive character and he is emotionally and mentally handicapped. A child who can’t be socialized and thus in the end his behaviour is responsible for the destruction of the whole family.
Doris Lessing plays with her readers’ emotions and their traditional views concerning children and family life. In general children are regarded as nice human beings who can be easily be loved. But reality shows a different picture. Every family makes the experience that children aren’t always easy to handle but Ben in the “The Fifth Child” is really a monster – a human creature full of aggression and violence and there is no way to change his change his behaviour – a nightmare for every family.
Doris Lessing shows us that it is difficult to integrate some human beings into society. There are many reasons why children / people are socially and emotionally disturbed and it is clear that they produce many problems for their social surrounding as well as for society.
The Essay on Flight By Doris Lessing 2
Love is one of the most powerful emotions that will usually exist when everything else has gone. Therefore, it is really miserable when you have to let go of the one you love. In the short story “Flight” by Doris Lessing, we see how much the granddad loves his granddaughter, and how he does not want to give her up to someone else. This love comes to the granddad a lot of conflicts, he wants to ...
There still remain many important questions for which it is necessary to find answers. i.e. “How can society treat these handicapped people in a human way?” or “What can society do in order to support parents by bringing up handicapped children?” or “How can they be integrated into social life?” or “What are the reasons why people are handicapped? “Is it possible to find solutions for their problems? “What is needed to help them? Lessing tells us that society is rather unable to deal with these problems and the frightening solution is the breakdown of Harriet’s and David’s family which could stand for our whole society.
Furthermore Lessing tells us that we are full of unrealistic views concerning family life. We all are influenced by the traditional thinking having a house, having children should make us happy. But happiness never comes into being by having things or a family. We are ourselves responsible for happiness and one thing is clear as reality shows happiness can’t be planned. There are always obstacles presented by life which we have to overcome or not.
Lessing presents us family life as a planned time of life which can be handled if everybody only wants to live together and to raise children this works until the time when Ben is born but then everything is different. Many of us regard family as a community within which we can feel at ease. We think that a family helps us to relax from the stress at work but in reality family can be a place where people feel extremely unhappy, exhausted and exploited. It is a fact that family is presented us an ideal institution by various institutions i.e. church, conservative politicians, advertising. But nowadays times are different and people have the choice between the traditional way of living and new forms of relationship.
To sum it up I think this book is at first sight not easy to understand. But if you take a closer look it tells you much about our modern society. To a huge extent it is frightening how Lessing develops a family drama. Until the end of the story you hope for a happy end but it doesn’t come. To my mind the description of Ben’s behaviour mainly his aggression and violence is so authentic that it is difficult to bear because reading about this produces so much bad feelings and I personally feel shocked about the fact that it is so easy that a family is totally destroyed by the misbehaviour of one member.
The Essay on Family and Life Story Work
?In this assignment I aim to discuss life story work: which can provide the care worker, and care receiver a better understanding of each other’s needs, and provide the care worker with information that can help support the care receiver in the best way. The carer needs to possess certain skills sensitivity, confidentiality, empathy, trustworthiness, and have commitment to seeing the story to the ...
