Conrad, Calvin, and Beth make up the Jarrett family. Beth is the mother, Calvin, the father, and Conrad, their remaining son. Buck, their other son, was killed before the novel took place in a boating accident. The dysfunction begins at the beginning of the novel, which takes place a year or so after Buck is killed. AMPP would have been very useful for the family, especially the mother. They avoid discussing the death, which leads to many acts of silence and violence. There are many scenes where they are so worn down by the death that they are led to act aggressively or passive-aggressively to people who may be hindering or helping them. Regardless of the scenario, they avoid their true feelings and ideas involved with facing the death in the family and instead cope by lashing out at the people around them. They all would benefit from sitting down and having a discussion concerning the day-to-day feelings and thoughts that they may have about Buck. I also believe …show more content…
In my own opinion, I believe she lacks understanding and compassion for her family. She assumes that Conrad would figure it out on his own, but instead leads him to be depressed and alienated. She lacks empathy for her entire family in several instances and paves the way to her eventual separation from Calvin and Conrad. She became emotionless and constantly talked of escaping to another state and masks her trauma concerning the death of Buck. Instead of trying to work with her husband, she continuously disagrees with him on how to treat her son and truly backs down from her family. I feel like if she would have simply understood that all people are different and that the situation affected each of the members in a different way, she would have been able to help Conrad in getting over the death and not have been so blind to the true problem. The problem was never the death of the son, but how each of them needed to cope with that, and she totally threw in the