David Pelzer

In the novel "A Child Called It, David Pelzer recounts the horrifying events which surrounded his childhood. Renowned for his honesty in detailing his abusive childhood, Pelzer never fails to leave anything out of the details. Typically, readers come away from the text in shock that "this actually happens" to children. Regardless, Pelzer 's story contains more than a horrific account of abuse, it contains a much deeper meaning: the importance of hope.

For Pelzer, it was his hope which allowed to to survive. Many times throughout the text, David describes the abuse that her endured knowing that it would either end or kill him. While some may not see the later as being an appropriate end, for David, it would end his abuse. He hoped for the abuse

She found any excuse to punish Dave, while favoring her other children, and her punishments grew more demoralizing the older he got. Initially, she would slap him, smash his face into the mirror and make him repeat “I’m a bad boy!” or require him to search for hours for an item she had “lost.” But with time, her cruelty grew to include denying him food for days on end, making him sleep on a cot in the basement, forcing him to wear the same unwashed shirt and pants to school every day for three years, and referring to him only as ‘the boy’ or

The second thing that Pelzer accomplished is that he puts a face on child abuse. Every day, we see kids getting slapped in Wal-Mart or the grocery store and parents threatening, “Just wait till I get you home!” In recent months, we have heard tales of the mother who drowned her five children, and the mother who starved and imprisoned her daughter. Students are killing one another in our schools, and the media is quick to report on every detail of their home lives. After a while, as we read these accounts, we become numb, write them off as yet another example of bad parenting, and think to ourselves, “Gee, that’s too bad. I really feel sorry for the