ipl-logo

Bless The Beasts And The Bedwetters: Article Analysis

582 Words3 Pages

Conflict can change interaction between people, escalate, and lead towards violence when people within a community express intolerance and restrict others. Some leaders of a community confine others who are different from them, conveying their intolerance; this usually creates more conflict and perpetuates negative opinions. The article “In the City of Brotherly Love” is a clear example of this. After a wave of Irish Catholic immigrants began arriving in the U.S. in the 1820s given the impression that it was a land of opportunity, they unexpectedly received a bitter welcome from the Anglo-Saxon Protestant community. Since they are looked down upon and given no control regarding their rights (including education, religion, and employment), …show more content…

In Bless the Beasts and the Children, the Bedwetters is a group of young boys who are misfits in society and who have been neglected by their parents. They have been sent to a camp in Arizona that promises the parents that the boys will be transformed into “real men” (Swarthout, 1970). Everyone in the camp soon realizes that Cotton, the leader, and his gang are troublemakers. More conflicts develop because the boys’ need for constant attention takes away others’ fun camp experience. Eventually, the Bedwetters are excluded from all camp activities, intolerant of their disruptive behavior, and even bullied for being different. The conflict has changed the other camper’s impressions negatively. The boys are so disgusted by the oppressive treatment, that they run away from camp. It was not until after they embark on a road trip, alone, that they begin to mature. They were shown capable of solving their own problems and reached their goal of freeing innocent buffalo from inequality, thus becoming real men (Swarthout, 1970). The buffalo ironically represent the boys; boys who would rather risk sacrificing their lives to be free than be oppressed. Conflict gradually led to violence because the other campers did not accept the Bedwetters’s differences. If they had been tolerant and accepting with the main characters,

Open Document