Memoir of a Child's Courage to Survive

The purpose of this research is to examine A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer. The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the pattern of ideas emerging in the work and then to discuss in detail the significance of and the means by which the ideas are expressed.

To call Pelzer's book an autobiographical horror story is hardly an understatement. This brief memoir is a first-person account of a childhood transformed from what is described as a Brady Bunch experience (17) into an experience similar to tenure in a concentration camp, over a period of some five years. The point of attack for the memoir is the day of Pelzer's "rescue" at age 11 from his horror of a home by school, police, and social-services professionals. His persistently ragged clothing and bruised and emaciated condition, together with his habitual stealing of fellow pupils' food for lunch, which had been closely observed by teachers and school administrators over a period of months, motivated school personnel to contact police and see to it that Pelzer was removed from his home.

After the account of the rescue, Pelzer backtracks to provide the details of the a

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