How does an eight-year old child get through life in the civil war without the love and support of her mother? In Pat Carr 's novella, Leaving Gilead, the Birdsong family have to leave their home as the war comes closer. Geneva, Saranell 's mother, only cares about flirting with generals, even though she is married. This causes her to be an absentee mother, who doesn 't care about her child. Saranell, who tries desperately to capture her mother 's attention, receives none, leading her to having to find it elsewhere in Renny, their slave. It is better to lose a parent through death, than it is through emotional abandonment. Saranell goes through many things as her family leaves their home, including the depravity of her mother 's …show more content…
' The voice was more like a scraping against hard wood with a file, and the wound of a mouth didn 't seem to move. 'Such a ridiculous - waste of years. ' The swollen tongue may have tried to swallow. 'For us all '" (Carr 142). Saranell who has been yearning her mother 's love through is journey, has just been told by her mother that she was a waste of time. One would think that at least when Geneva is about to die, she would show some affection towards her child, but instead she does the opposite. In Neil Shusterman 's book
Unwind, one of the main characters, Connor, is faced with similar neglect from his parents. In a world where children between the ages of thirteen to eighteen can become unwound if their parents choose to do so, Connor faced with the reality that his parents, just like Geneva, think he was a waste of life. Not understanding why his parents would Sandhu 3 want to basically kill him by getting his unwound, Connor struggles to find his way in the world, but with the help of his friends he finds a way to survive, just like Renny helped
Saranell. Howe and Shusterman show the reader two perspectives of children who were emotionally neglected by their parents, and how they filled that