Hungry for Attention!!

Firstly, I would like to say that so far I like this book. Yes, I have only read the first chapter, yet I feel a promise of knowledge and understanding of perseverance in this book.

Is young Richard alone in his cravings?

This boy, Richard, burns his home. He moves to a crappy flat with his family, his father abandons them, and is forced to grow up quickly.

Richard is hungry. He is hungry for attention, for a way to escape all that is going on at home. While his mother works, young Richard goes to a saloon and drinks, says bad stuff to people for money, yet the money is not what matters, it is the attention, people laugh at him and with him. Richard wants something to do.

Is he alone? Yes, I feel as though he is. Even though there are other people in the story that are hungry too, it does not mean that they are hungry WITH Richard, or even share the same cravings….

In the beginning of the chapter he talks about burning the house and shares a dialogue with his younger brother, yet afterwards his brother is not mentioned. The reader knows that throughout Richard’s stay at the orphan house, his younger brother is there with him, but Richard does not mention him.

His mother also, is told by Miss. Simon not to visit them so often, so Richard does not see her too much anymore. Richard does not like his dad, or Miss. Simon, and defiantly not his father’s strange woman.

I get the feeling that this six year old boy is very alone. True, the author is going back and putting things the way he sees them now, but still, it seems to me as if he kept to himself a lot. He knew what he felt, but did not express it aloud.

Yes, I guess he was alone, alone in his had, left to talk to himself, because everyone else seems kind of busy doing something else.