The main character had a terrible relationship with his father. They didn’t see eye to eye at all. The father just took him to baseball games and left him there with an usher that he paid to watch him. The absence of a father figure was significant to his childhood. When he grew up he tried to be anything but that memory. He was involved in his children’s lives. This would be a family theme where the parent separates themselves from the child, so they could attend to their own matters in life.
The next theme can be seen in the family that has the young girl being feed information like a sponge ruining her childhood so she could get ahead intellectually. The parents did not see her as a child but as some sort of machine. It is not the proper way to raise a child. She was socially awkward and didn’t have the social skills to socialize with the other children at Kevin’s birthday party. This theme is where the parents treat the child as an object rather than a living being. The next one is in the single mom with the two kids.
She struggles to support for her family and her children disrespect her all the time. The son was so distant from her and left all the time, while the daughter was in love with a troubled boy. The son was having problems with himself since she went through puberty and he didn’t have a father figure to explain all the changes in his body and while he was feeling certain things. Todd became that father figure when he married the boy’s sister and got to explain what was happening through experience. This helped out the single mother trying to support her two children.
The youngest son and brother of Gil the main character displayed the same type of parenting as the grandfather did with Gil, abandoning his child and dumping him with whoever would take care of him. The personal struggles were mostly between the grandfather and Gil with how he was a bad father to him and how it affected his view on raising a family. They also had the conflict between the single mother and her daughter about how she was living her life. The conflict escalated when she ran away from home and married Todd, with whom she was carrying his child. The other onflicts were between Gil’s brother and the mob that was trying to kill him and the relationship he had with his father when he was begging him for money to save him. The heartbreaking moments were when the couples marriages were at risk, like the family with the genius child how the father kept pushing her and how the mother wanted her to have a normal childhood, as well as Gil and his wife when he found out about his oldest son who had to go to therapy and that he was struggling with school and that he had yet another child on the way after he ended up quitting his job.
The morale and value lessons were shown in each immediate family was that not every family is perfect. Each family had at least one member that had some sort of quirk or problem that they needed help with or made them different. Gil’s child, Kevin, felt like a social pariah due to his lack of athletic skill in baseball and how the school board made him see a therapist. One more key concept is that no matter what family is there for you.
Gil’s brother was a gambling addict, which had landed him in a dangerous spot with some dangerous people. He had racked up a debt so large that his debtors wanted him dead. The father even though he wanted to retire extended his help to him. The son took advantage of his father’s kindness since he was his favorite but did not go forth with his father’s wishes. The troubled child with the single mother needed a father figure to explain the changes going on with him.
He was confused and felt distant from his family and paid no attention to his mother. Todd became that father figure and the child quickly became attached to him. They also displayed that the family has to make sacrifices for the greater good of the family. When Gil quit his job he found out that he had a baby on the way so he had to re-evaluate his situation with his job. The man who was using his child as a knowledge sponge had to sacrifice his ways of taking away his child’s youth to keep his marriage. Family is always first.
The personal values that I got from this movie was that people aren’t perfect, but in order to make their family happy or protect their family they would go through enormous lengths to make that happen. One small event in a child’s life can make such a big difference in their outlook on life. The movie emphasized strong family values and how children can be influence so much by their elders. I got that being a supportive family member can mean the world to the kids. Each parent has their own role in the child’s upbringing and it is important that each one plays their role in the child’s life.
