Out There By Lindsay Hunter Summary

A moral review on Out There, by Lindsay Hunter. Having children gives parents a sense of obligation towards them, it also gives the parents a sense of responsibility to be the leading role model of their children. Someone that their children can look up to for their desirable values, since they are the ones they grow along with; grow with them in terms of developing important values. In Lily's and the personas case, watching their dad burn someones car- specifically their grandmothers car, is not the most appealing, and morally right to watch especially at their age. In the text, what the father did by soaking the car in gasoline in front of his two children is not what being a good role model for their children is, also letting his children

Other than their observations with their parents’ behaviors, hearing these said stories and tall tales can also affect their approach in life. It teaches them new things or changes their perception of something that they already know. According to the persona ‘Out there’ is “A place where people come to burn cars, a place where abandoned dogs eat sand or each other, these are not comforting facts.” where in fact it is just a simple desert that was corrupted with the stories told about the farmer and his vicious dogs, as well as what their father or ‘Pops’ had done with their grandmothers car, which can be evidently seen in this phrase “People hear that story and get disgusted but some of these same people have driven the family dog out there and set it free to join the pack, Pop did that to Jinx but said it was good news, Jinx was with her own, was back roaming the desert sands the way God intended, and all I could think was how Jinx didn’t have that many teeth, who would soak her food in water so she could get it down?”. The phrase mentioned Gods intention in terms of their dog Jinx joining her own self-eating pack is not exactly what God wants, for them (the dogs) to be liberated that way and not do good. The striking stories and somewhat false beliefs that they have heard, guided

However, not all of the things that they are knowledgeable about are real or morally correct. They may be knowledgeable about the wrong things and give the wrong information to others. Take knowledge on tradition for example, traditions have lived for ages from different cultures and races. Traditions are religious and spiritual acts that are built on honorable values. Whenever there is something good, there is also the opposite, bad traditions are inevitable and unavoidable, these traditions are upsetting and intriguing, similar to the car burning in the dessert in the text. “This is your legacy, he shouted at us from inside the car. Your rite of passage. If you make it you will be men. If you don’t I’ll lickety-split a prayer for each of you come Sunday. Then he peeled out, left us coughing in his dust. Lily said, Don’t he know we’re girls? How are we supposed to become men then?” A tradition that was said to start with the persona and Lily is all that mattered at that very moment. Their so called tradition is the complete opposite of what it is intended to be, it caused fear to his children and it also made them lonely by his abrupt leave.

Everything comes back to proper parenthood, what the parents do and what the children experience from the outside environment