The Body Of Christopher Creed By Carol Plum-Ucci

Parent’s Perspective All parents have different and similar ways of raising their children throughout their lives so they can prosper into intelligent and admirable young adults. The different and similar parenting techniques are portrayed in the novel, The Body Of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum- Ucci, when Torey Adam’s parents and Christopher Creed’s parents show their parenting techniques. Throughout the story, it is evident that Christopher Creed’s and Torey Adam’s parents have very different relationships with their children and different ways of parenting and teaching them. In Carol Plum- Ucci’s novel, The Body of Christopher Creed, Torey Adam’s parents and Christopher Creed’s parents had very similar and different parenting techniques,

Torey’s mom has a more calm and gentle, yet strict way of showing her authority. Whereas, Mrs. Creed has more of a commanding and aggressive approach when showing her authority. After the phone call incident, Torey and his mother were at the police station waiting to see if Bo Richardson would get convicted of any felonies. As Bo and Mrs. Creed were arguing about the phone call and the breaking and entering incident, Mrs. Adam’s calmly, “Stood up. She looked too calm and too slow in this storm. She turned around and looked [Torey] dead in the eye and said, ‘[He] needs to do two things: Stay calm and keep [Ali] calm’” (Plum- Ucci 99). Normally, when there is so much chaos and catastrophe occurring, one would become annoyed and take it out on others in an intrusive way, but Mrs. Adams did the opposite. She remains calm, yet authoritative, while others are arguing and hysterically crying. On the other hand, Mrs. Creed shows her dominion over others with encroachment and demand. She gives orders and expects them to be obeyed, like when putting her children to bed she commands, “Lights- out. . . Troops, march. . .’” (Plum- Ucci 72). Mrs. Creed has a more forceful way of showing that she is in charge than Mrs. Adams does. She gives them an order and they must obey it. Showing authority and love can be portrayed by parents in various

Obviously, both sets of parents loved their children, but they had very different ways of showing it. Torey’s mother is more of a nonchalant kind of mom, whereas Christopher’s mother is more pretentious and strict and that changes how they show their love to their kids. After Torey went through the traumatic experience of finding a 20 year old dead body in a burial ground, his mother expressed that, “‘[She] [can not] begin to imagine what [Torey] must have gone through in that cave. [She] [has] known [him] since before [he] was born. And [Torey] is the last person in the world who should have seen that’” (Plum-Ucci 229). She loves and cares for him deeply and strongly believes that he never should never have gone through such a life- changing experience like that. Along the same lines, Mrs. Creed has a great deal of love for Christopher, but shows it differently than Mrs. Adams does. Mrs. Creed has a more vigilant form of showing love, like when she explains that, “‘Chris was allowed to go out! [Mr. and Mrs. Creed] offered to drive him to the dances! [She] even signed up to chaperone the dances, before he said he was not really into them’” (Plum- Ucci 174). She obviously loved him enough to offer to be there with him at dances, and to bring him to the dances, but she was doing too much. Mrs. Creed was going into too much