Life Reflected In Laurie Halse Anderson's Twisted

“If that was life, then it was twisted.” In Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel “Twisted”, life for the protagonist Tyler Miller wasn’t a perilous adventure, nor was it a piece of cake either. For Tyler, life was in between, a twisted cocktail of good and bad. Yet, the bad always seemed to outweigh the good to him. Which Anderson’s first person narration of the book helps us understand and relate to. In the beginning, Tyler is still a young, naive boy who only wants to be seen when he commits the “Foul Deed”, yet that one simple action backfires against him, causing him to be seen in a negative light and marking him as a “danger” to his peers. As he begins to grow up, Tyler struggles with low self-esteem and suicidal thoughts caused by his bodily …show more content…
His father was a workaholic who didn’t support his family emotionally, punished his kids for the simplest things, and forced them to live under the pretense of a happy, perfect family. He always expects the best out of Tyler and pressures him all the time, yet he sees him as a failure for his smallest mistakes. Tyler is incredibly angry at his father for what he’s done to the family and the terrible way he treats him, and displays that anger through his thoughts of hurting his father, “I cross the kitchen in two steps. I put my hand around his throat and lift him off the ground with one arm. I heave him across the room. He slides the length of the counter and lands on the kitchen table. The fruit bowl crashes on his head, and an apple lands in his mouth. Little stars dance in a circle over him and his eyes roll up.” Tyler’s mother, on the other hand, makes up many excuses for their father’s behavior, despite not approving of his actions. His father doesn’t seem to take regard of his mother, and even failed to show up to their charismas card photoshoot and didn’t apologize as well. This made Tyler resent his father even more, because he’s limiting his mother’s potential. His father’s attitude also turns him off from wanting a family, “Why bother trying? What was the point? So I could go to some suck-ass college, get a diploma, march out into a job that I hated, marry a pretty girl who would want to divorce me, but then she wouldn't because we'd have kids, so instead she'd be the angry woman at the other end of the kitchen table, and the kids would grow up watching this, until one day I'd look at my son and he'd look just like that face in the bathroom