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Conrad's Alienation In Ordinary People By Judith Guest

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Conrad’s Alienation Alienation is the feeling of being isolated from someone or something you might have once presently known very well. In Judith Guest’s book, Ordinary People, Conrad is the main character who deals with the battle of alienation within his own life. Conrad is a normal teenage boy on the outside, but on the inside feels guilt for his former brother Buck dying, and later tried to commit suicide because of it. Once Conrad was released from the mental hospital he was at, he alienated himself from his mother, friends and even the swim team he used to know so well. At home, Conrad’s family is nothing near perfect. His mother is a perfectionist who wants everything done her way and is very set on herself and her family appearing …show more content…

People treated him much differently, and not in a positive way. This causes falling outs with his friends and eventually the point where Conrad notices if he wants to help himself, he needs to be around positive influences and not people who are only going to affect him negatively. They have also become two-faced friends who now talk about him behind his back, like when he overheard himself get called a “flake” in the locker room so he wasn’t invited to hangout with his friends. An example of how his friends were negative influences on him was when Kevin Stillman, a friend who drove to school in the morning with him everyday got into a fist fight with Conrad and lost. This fight was due to a buildup of Kevin, a very insecure person, constantly picking at Conrad and his choices of girls he likes, and even his performance on the swim team. One quote from Conrad that shows an example of the effect his friends have on him is when he is in bed at night, “In bed he waits for sleep. He cannot get under until he has reviewed the day, counted up his losses. He must learn more control, cannot allow himself the luxury of anger. He has seen it happen before. Guys become easy targets for the Stillmans of the world. Next time laugh when he needles you”(74). This quote not only shows what negative effect his friends are having on him, but also that he is somewhat

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