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Ordinary People Character Analysis

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Ordinary People Term Essay After reading the book; Ordinary People and learning about all of the characters, I’d say I most closely resemble Conrad Jarrett. Conrad has experienced a lot and has faded relationships with people he used to have close relationships with. He lost his brother, tried to commit suicide, he has also been in and out of hospitals. A couple of these ways are similar to me. For example, in chapter 13, Conrad gets in a fight with his mom. Her name is Beth. Basically, he got in a fight with her because he felt like she didn’t care about stuff he does. It ends with a lot of yelling. In the past, I have gotten in fights with my mom which had a lot of yelling but it was over stupid stuff. I guess it relates in a way though. Another …show more content…

Conrad gets in a fight with Kevin Stillman. Conrad obviously won the fight but later on that evening, after he gets dinner he starts feeling bad over what he had done. He thinks to himself “Why are you always messing up?” “I didn’t mean to” “I didn’t mean to doesn’t mean anything.”. I haven’t been in a fight like that with someone but in past relationships I’ve been in, if there was a fight and it got bad I’d say a lot of stuff I didn’t mean and the girl would say stuff back but after it ended and we weren’t talking I’d feel bad about the stuff I said and regret saying it and it seemed like it always happened. Thinking back, Conrad isn’t the only character from the novel that I can relate to. The other character I can relate to is Beth, Conrad’s mother. She is really caring and try’s to have good relationships with everyone. She is super laid back too. She has experienced a lot in her past and just wants

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Initially reported was Michelle†™s behavior towards his suicide. Michelle told Conrad to “get back in”, when he tried to save his own life by crawling out of the carbon monoxide filled truck. Michelle did not utilize the simple instruction for Conrad to get out of the car. Michelle continuously urged Conrad to “not back down”. The day Conrad killed himself, Michelle texted him this message, “The time is right and you are ready ... just do it babe.” “You can’t think about it.

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Beth doesn’t let herself feel, she is a perfectionist, and cares about what people will think. I feel like I relate to Conrad in the depression part. Recently my parents got a divorce and that was hard for me, I started to feel depressed and it was hard to get up every morning and keep going knowing that every

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They even went to the Cabanash Country Sausage Festival together. Jessie soon realizes how nice it is to have friends and her feelings toward Conrad grow stronger. Conrad was starting to feel the same. Soon it was time for Conrad to go back to the Doctors and have his leg checked out.

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He already lost a brother and that was already hard enough to cope with, let alone another close friend which he had very few of. Karen was a friend of Conrad in the hospital after his attempted suicide. They tried to keep in contact after both getting discharged but their only meet seemed to be brief and awkward. Conrad felt that it was a waste of time since Karen was focused on her school play rather than him. Conrad tried to contact her again but her parents blew him off.

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Calvin used the word “tell me” and “trouble” to show that he was genuinely worried about Conrad’s health. All of this concern from Calvin helped Conrad communicate better, which in turn made him heal. Additionally, Conrad and Calvin continue to build onto their relationship. After Calvin told Conrad that Beth left for vacation,Conrad told Calvin that he wanted Calvin to be harder on him occasionally, like how Calvin was to Buck. Then Calvin responds with,"He needed it.

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After suggesting Conrad be a part of the next vacation, an argument erupted and he more or less discredited everything she said, further stressing the already minuscule emotional safety between the two. Other than a couple of other minor scenes, Calvin really did not display much management

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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.

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" The thing is," she says, "we should both be careful about who we see. It isn't good for either of us to get down." (p. 57) Also, Conrad becomes interested in a girl, Jeanine who was new in Lake Forest. From the novel, we see, that they start very close and make a good pair by the end of the novel.

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In this case Conrad doesn’t have a mother to help him through life since his mother does not show any compassion towards him he has to learn to go through adolescent life without a strong motherly figure. This shows a lot of perseverance, because he doesn’t have his mother to turn to in these tough times. He is a kid having to go through this with one parent by his side. He seems to cope with it well, but sometimes you know when there is a moment in the book that a boy just needs his

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Conrad’s stomach tightens. He needs no more enemies. He forced a laugh from the back of his throat..” (Guest 18). Conrad gave a fake laugh to please Stillman, so he wouldn’t get in a fight and ruin their friendship.

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Next, you learn that he feels responsible for the death of his brother, and that's why he's suffered so much the past few years. ‘“For killing him, don't you know that?”’(223). Once Conrad calms down, Berger says to him that it was good he had a breakdown. ‘“Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that”’ (227). Throughout the course of the sessions held, Berger talked to Conrad about feeling, and in the beginning of the book, he wasn't able to let himself feel

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Karen and Conrad have bonded over their time in the mental hospital; Once they leave the hospital there is no real reason for them to keep in contact unless it is to just check up on one another. “The only one who can help you is you,” Karen tells Conrad this when they meet at a diner to catch up. Later Karen says that she needs to leave early because she has things to do but Conrad thinks that he did something to make her leave, he feels like he is always the one driving people away. This brings Conrad's confidence down significantly, he has trouble making friends let alone keeping them and when he finally had someone to talk to she left. As the novel continues Conrad gets worse and he can't seem to find a way out of his depressive episode until one day he read the newspaper; “Teenager committed suicide” Conrad instantly was overflowed with a wave of shock and guilt, he couldn't believe she had given in and let her thoughts overpower her.

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From the beginning, Conrad had various problems in the way he thinks. From start to finish Conrad made a radical change in his life. He learned that his brother’s death wasn’t his fault and came to terms with the fact that his mother could never deliver him what he wants and needed to stop holding a grudge against her for that. Conrad was not the only one who experienced change; his mother, Beth, did as well. Beth realized that she could not love the way her family wanted her to and decided that herself and her social status were more significant than her own sons well-being.

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