Killing Babies by T.C Boyle

A detailed Summary of Killing Babies by T.C Boyle

Rick is a character that leads a very troubled life in the story Killing Babies by T.C Boyle,. Throughout Rick's whole life he had family problems. These family problems consisted of really never having a family. By the time he was twenty-three he was left alone to fight the world, without any parent or even without the support of a brother. The family problems that Rick had would later help develop his yearn for a family and the need to protect all children from the life he was forced to live. Rick's family problems in his early years were a direct cause to his reaction at the time of the shooting at the clinic.

Rick's childhood was a dreadfully dramatic and complicated one. He was a man that had lost all of his family values due to the events in his early childhood and adult years. The death of both his mother and father played a colossal role in the development of the man that Rick would turn out to be. Philip, Rick's brother was able to escape into adulthood with these extremely important family values. In fact it was this ten year spread between Philip and Rick that made these two brothers become two totally different people and lead two totally different types of lives. Philip becam

Philip and Rick had never truly liked each other. They were family by blood, but had no true family ties. In fact it is almost like they both grew up in different families. The family that Philip got to grow up in was a complete and wholesome family, a family that had both parents, would sit down and eat a home cooked meal at dinner and would never go out on Sundays. Rick's family was completely different. Rick's family while growing up pretty much consisted of only his father. Rick even says, "by the time I knew his [Philip] name he was in college." This shows that Philip and his mother were never around during Rick's childhood. The only family member he had was pretty much his father. It seemed that Rick and his father had a pretty good relationship, however that relationship would be cut short due to his early death. Rick was "left an orphan at twenty-three," which would only imply that Rick had not reached the point of maturity of most twenty-three year olds. One would imply that the family values that Philip grew up on completely disappeared when their mother died, after all he says "it was just my father and me, and we tended to go out a lot, especially on Sundays." It was these childhood characteristics that led Rick to yearn for a normal loving life and help develop the need to protect any child with any chance of leading a normal typical life. These feelings are what made Rick react to the zombies who threatened the possibility of ruining a normal life for Sally or Philip's kids.

In the last day before the anointment of the Jesus-thumpers, Rick grabbed a gun. Most times when people carry a gun it is to protect themselves, but in this case Rick was carrying the gun to protect Philip, Denise, the kids and the other Sally's in the world. He says "Philip didn't have it in him to protect himself, let alone Denise and the kids and all the knocked-up grieving Sally's of the world." Never in this quote does he refer to protecting himself. He then says, "That was all. That was it. The extent of my thinking." As the day went on, Rick began to forget about the gun due to the protestors being arrested and all being in jail. His need to protect others was diminished so therefore the guns need diminished as well. These feelings wouldn't stir again until the last scene. He saw Sally and "all at once I felt myself moving," Rick was going to rescue this

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1605
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English