Angelic or Atrocious?
Is Isaiah really a good kid?
J. Chiew
Imagine, a small family, struggling to keep their heads up and out of the raging waters of life, plummeting in and out of poverty. “The Beans and Rice Chronicles of Isaiah Dunn” is about a considerate, young boy who appears to be holding his crumbling family together. Could this kind, thoughtful boy, however, be the cause of their dysfunctional family? To begin with, Isaiah is extremely self-centred. Furthermore, he assumes without understanding. Finally, he does not treat people like equal individuals. All of these traits do not point toward the sweet child that everyone believes he is.
First and foremost, Isaiah is self-centred. He demonstrates this by only wanting food that appeals to his taste buds. Quite selfish, given that his family barely has enough money to keep their heads under a roof. He complains about eating beans and rice every day, but does he ever stop to think about the fact that he has food at all? And then he goes to eat cereal instead of his beans and rice. "Mama makes beans and rice for dinner again, but I pour myself a
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He understands so little about his mom’s situation. Isaiah does not even notice that his mom is drinking to cope with the pain that came with his dad’s death. He has shown multiple times that he knows that his mom drinks, but he continues to believe that she is simply not trying to get a job. He also blames his mother for their eviction, although he has no idea why they were evicted in the first place. He also thinks his dad could have prevented all of the terrible things his family has experienced. For example, he thinks if his dad were alive they would not have been poor. This would not have been the outcome. The beans and rice symbolized their poverty-stricken life, and since his dad’s story was about beans and rice it would mean they ate it often and were already poor before he