The increasing amount of dysfunctional families in today’s generation is affecting the intimacy between a parent and his or her child. Being dysfunctional, meaning they are not working normally or properly, these families have different attributes about them that contrast to normal, unimpaired families. Kevin Wilson, the author of the Alex Award-winning collection of short stories Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, displays these certain attributes about a dysfunctional family in a marvelous fashion, but in the strangest yet most remarkable ways. Wilson in his short story, “Go, Fight, Win” incorporates the lifelong bond parents and their children maintain, although he perverts this relationship through the use of a shy, awkward teenager
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In a book review of Kevin Wilson’s short story Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, Michaux Dempster, a teacher with a master’s degree in Arts at Hampden-Sydney College, suggests that Wilson cautions “trying to fit unlike things together can result in a tremendous disaster” (1). Through the mother’s persistent nagging, strangle-holding the assumption that her child, Penny, and she have an intimate relationship, her influence on her child begins to degrade, suffocating Penny, and eventually damaging her future.
As a child is untiringly pressured by the influence of his/her parents, just as Penny is in Wilson’s short story “Go, Fight, Win,” the cherished connection between parent and child begins to erode. In the beginning, Wilson exasperates the desire Penny’s mother has for her daughter to join the cheerleading squad, constantly pressing the fact that she is the new kid in school and needs to make something of herself. As she consistently comments about Penny’s looks and athletic …show more content…
Nearing the end of the story, Penny and her new friend’s relationship blossoms while her connection with her mother dies. Close to the end, Penny’s friend injures himself playing with fire, potentially harming Penny as well. After the day ends, Penny, wrapped in her mother’s arms that night in bed, constantly arose from her sleep pondering “why she was in bed with her mother” (161). Penny’s mother always pressured Penny into becoming someone she hated; making her join the cheerleading squad and ruining the one ability she always depended on, “to disappear” (131). Wilson finally shows Penny’s break from her mother during the middle of the night when she shaves her head. “When Penny looked at herself,” Wilson writes, “she was quietly happy to see that she liked how she appeared” (162). Penny, finally being able to gaze upon the person she truly is without her mother’s intake, is satisfied for the first time throughout the entire story. The ridding of her lustrous hair that her mother cared for so much allows readers to understand the final break from her mother’s
In a book review of Kevin Wilson’s short story Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, Michaux Dempster, a teacher with a master’s degree in Arts at Hampden-Sydney College, suggests that Wilson cautions “trying to fit unlike things together can result in a tremendous disaster” (1). Through the mother’s persistent nagging, strangle-holding the assumption that her child, Penny, and she have an intimate relationship, her influence on her child begins to degrade, suffocating Penny, and eventually damaging her future.
As a child is untiringly pressured by the influence of his/her parents, just as Penny is in Wilson’s short story “Go, Fight, Win,” the cherished connection between parent and child begins to erode. In the beginning, Wilson exasperates the desire Penny’s mother has for her daughter to join the cheerleading squad, constantly pressing the fact that she is the new kid in school and needs to make something of herself. As she consistently comments about Penny’s looks and athletic …show more content…
Nearing the end of the story, Penny and her new friend’s relationship blossoms while her connection with her mother dies. Close to the end, Penny’s friend injures himself playing with fire, potentially harming Penny as well. After the day ends, Penny, wrapped in her mother’s arms that night in bed, constantly arose from her sleep pondering “why she was in bed with her mother” (161). Penny’s mother always pressured Penny into becoming someone she hated; making her join the cheerleading squad and ruining the one ability she always depended on, “to disappear” (131). Wilson finally shows Penny’s break from her mother during the middle of the night when she shaves her head. “When Penny looked at herself,” Wilson writes, “she was quietly happy to see that she liked how she appeared” (162). Penny, finally being able to gaze upon the person she truly is without her mother’s intake, is satisfied for the first time throughout the entire story. The ridding of her lustrous hair that her mother cared for so much allows readers to understand the final break from her mother’s