The Other Blog 6: 03-20-09

“Remorse—and notoriety—finally led me to Rand Barry” (212). John William has recently died and Neil felt the need to apologize to his parents (however, Mrs. Barry is insane, so he did not speak with her). Rand spoke with him after the news of the money came out and told him many things that John William had never felt the need to divulge to Neil. Rand claims that the entire burden of blame should be placed on his and his wife’s shoulders, but primarily his wife’s. She was an insane woman whose beliefs of how to raise the infant John William overtook Rand’s beliefs, because as she claimed that his job was to be the breadwinner, and she would take care of the infant at home. Her way of “taking care” of John William, as Rand told it, “Virginia believed…that you didn’t want to positively reinforce the negative behavior of crying by offering comfort” (217). John William was neglected, left alone to cry all night, but Rand couldn’t, and Virginia wouldn’t do anything about it. Rand describes the flaws in his wife’s plan, “you can’t mistreat an infant like that and afterward have a reasonable expectation that all will go right in adulthood” (217). This is one example of how John William was not cared for as a child, however even when he was cared for, his parents missed some things.
John William was described as a boy wonder, the young genius. He was so intelligent; he began the hobby of telescope making at age thirteen. This intelligence enthralled his father, who believed that this gift who soon be harbored into a great future for his son. However, this intelligence kept Rand and Virginia at their distance when he was a teen, leading to even more neglect and John William’s sense of not belonging in this world. “I didn’t see, and neither did Ginnie, how this might have what you would call a dark side” (241). A dark side, in the fact that John William’s interests began to veer sharply away from the educated path, preferring instead to continue on his own path, one that does not involve schooling in any way, because as he said at age fourteen, “The stuff they teach you at school is just so they can own you” (243). So, we can now see that the path that John William chose was chosen at a very young age, and it was surely influenced by the lack of love and respect that he was shown as a child. Without the guidance of a true maternal figure and the love they exhibit, he lacked the understanding that others can be forgiving and kind. The weakness that his father showed simply made him expect all men to be weak, and that was not what he wanted, he wanted to have the power to live on his own, so he simply left the “hamburger world” and went to live on his own, simply because of the neglect he had been shown as a child.