Living in a luxurious house with understanding and patient parents is a dream of every child, right? William John Watkins in “The Beggar in the Living Room” draws a portrait of an orphan who was “lucky” to be adopted by an amazing family of Aunt Zsa-Zsa and Uncle Howard, who act like caring and supportive parents. Finally, the protagonist gets away from abusive step-father and gets into the family of well-educated, supportive people. However, behind various acts of attention, the story examines the complexity of relationships and problem of miscommunication which can force a person to abandon even luxurious home.
The problem of miscommunication is clear from the first sentence where a reader is exposed to tension between character’s …show more content…
Watkins unfolds the story of an orphan child and invites us to his world which lacks love, compassion, and real understanding. The entire story was about abuse, and inability to communicate. In this essay, I analyzed three different forms of miscommunication. First is strong battle that happens within the protagonist: due to society, he developed a very negative outlook about his personality and as a result, he is constantly cynical about himself. He has accepted the idea that he is bad and doesn’t try to improve. Another instance of failed communication is happening between the protagonist and the reader. Despite getting to know the protagonist, he is pretty sheltered and doesn’t share much about himself. The reader learns about very basic facts from his life but doesn’t get to know about his true feelings, thoughts, and motives for actions. And finally, miscommunication between protagonist and people around him is the most obvious problem that forces him to run away from his “dream home”. He has been trying to find a place where he would have the real conversation with real people, however, the house of hologram-designer could not provide this space. At last, Watkins depicts a story about failed society that doesn’t know how to communicate and uses the language of mental and physical abuse instead of love and compassion. He shows the society where communication gets replaced by holograms and
The problem of miscommunication is clear from the first sentence where a reader is exposed to tension between character’s …show more content…
Watkins unfolds the story of an orphan child and invites us to his world which lacks love, compassion, and real understanding. The entire story was about abuse, and inability to communicate. In this essay, I analyzed three different forms of miscommunication. First is strong battle that happens within the protagonist: due to society, he developed a very negative outlook about his personality and as a result, he is constantly cynical about himself. He has accepted the idea that he is bad and doesn’t try to improve. Another instance of failed communication is happening between the protagonist and the reader. Despite getting to know the protagonist, he is pretty sheltered and doesn’t share much about himself. The reader learns about very basic facts from his life but doesn’t get to know about his true feelings, thoughts, and motives for actions. And finally, miscommunication between protagonist and people around him is the most obvious problem that forces him to run away from his “dream home”. He has been trying to find a place where he would have the real conversation with real people, however, the house of hologram-designer could not provide this space. At last, Watkins depicts a story about failed society that doesn’t know how to communicate and uses the language of mental and physical abuse instead of love and compassion. He shows the society where communication gets replaced by holograms and