Ruth In Judith Guest's The Color Of Water

In the novel “Ordinary People” by Judith Guest, Beth is the mother of Conrad and Buck Jarrett, Buck tragically died on a boating accident. Beth came from an economically stable family. In the memoir “The Color of Water” by James McBride, Ruth is the mother of James and 11 other children. Ruth came from an economically unstable family and a racist and abusive father. Ruth is a better mother because she strives to teach her kids morals that will help them in the future, whereas Beth is not bad mother because she doesn’t care about anyone but her self. Ruth teaches her kids that they cannot take their life for granted, they need to work hard to survive, the importance of a good education and God. Beth is the kind of mother that is in her own thing,

Also rather than work her marriage out with her husband she just leaves. Beth would rather go the easy way, to leave than work through her problems. When Ruth first moved to the United States, she had to deal with being treated like an outsider because of being a Jew even though she was white she didn’t fit in to the white supremacy because of her religion, but that was something she accepted and dealt with in her infancy. Later when she was older she converted to Christianity that’s where she found clarity, and it was not a religion she was forced to practice like Judaism. After she married her first husband a black man, they they treated her like a black woman so she was constantly discriminated, there nothing she could do but to deal with that because she couldn’t change the other peoples mind. Ruth shows her kids that they need to work with their problems rather than push them away, like Beth did. An example, of how Ruth felt about when she was discriminated but there is nothing she could do but to life with it, “She couldn’t stand racists of either color” (Chpt. 4, p.