Guilt In John Steinbeck's Essay About Family

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Guilt is a normal feeling an individual have when they feel like the lost of someone or something was an outcome of them not fulfilling a certain duty they were supposed to do. Also the feeling of failing on doing something in certain way that would have save them misery. For Charlie -the guilt he can not live with- is not just losing his friend Michael for he is not the only loved one, he lost his favorite aunt too, Aunt Helen. Aunt Helen was the only relative in the book who is named despite her absence in the novel and she plays an important role in Charlie’s life. Charlie keeps mentioning her in his letters so many times as he recalls their memories together, he even visit her grave occasionally. She was remembered as the only one who brings …show more content…

Those adolescents left to deal with those problems unassisted or guided. Charlie becomes a witness to an abusive relationship, where he sees his sister’s boyfriend hit her. She begs him not to tell anyone but he tells his father who pays a visit to the boy’s house to talk to his parents. His father is straight forward man giving Charlie honest and realistic answer, after Charlie concluded that the boy’s behavior might be a result of an abusive home which affected his judgment. His father’s answer is “Not everyone has a sob story, Charlie, and even if they do, it’s no excuse.” (39) in another words, what a person goes through no matter how bad is it does not give them an excuse to do something wrong. His sister on the other hand does not believe on her father’s words, she becomes angry at Charlie for telling her father saying that she hate him and calls him freak for what he did. This quotation demonstrate an immature display of character that cause the reader not to sympathies with Charlie’s sister. She was in a physical and mentally abusive relationship and she choses to remains oppressed by a male dominated figure. Charlie shows how he respects his sister and how he thinks she deserves more that he still replied nicely to her after she calls him a