A Child Called It: One Child’s Courage to Survive

When faced with extreme abuse as a child, Dave Pelzer displays an acute ability to survive. In Chapter 1 Pelzer maintains, “Mother can beat me all she wants, but I haven’t let her take away my will to somehow survive” (13). This commitment to staying alive, and the preservation of his will to live, guides Pelzer as a young boy, despite increasingly brutal beatings, mind games, grueling chores, and torture. Pelzer writes, “I knew if I wanted to live, I would have to think ahead” (40).

Throughout the book Catherine withholds food, isolates Dave from other family members, and even forces Dave to eat his baby brother’s feces, to dehumanize him. However, Dave devises clever tricks to stall Catherine’s torture tactics and maintain his sense of self, despite consistent demoralization. For instance, when Catherine locks Dave in the bathroom with a toxic mix of Clorox and ammonia, Dave figures out how to breathe through the air vent. When Catherine denies Dave food, Dave strategizes ways to steal food from school and from the family’s leftovers in the trash.

Catherine deliberately tries to break Dave’s spirit using verbal abuse. After Dave makes some progress at school and earns recognition, Catherine tells Dave, “You are a nobody! An It!” in an attempt to incite self-hatred in Dave (108). Dave recalls that Catherine strips him of his “very existence” in her refusal to acknowledge him as human (108). Dave also realizes that his mother’s hatred is no longer induced by substances and that she must really harbor a deep hatred for him to treat him so poorly. He recalls, “Mother’s words were no longer coming from the booze, they were coming from her heart” (108).

In addition to his mother’s abuse, Dave also contends with his father’s betrayal. Catherine’s abuse of Dave begins while Stephen Joseph is at work. Dave notices that his mother is “different as night and day when Father was home from work” (33). Dave begins to equate his father with safety, understanding that beatings do not occur when Stephen Joseph is around. Dave begins to idolize his father, seeing Stephen as his protector. He recalls, “I knew that as long as I stayed by his side, no harm would come to me” (33). However, Dave’s relationship with Stephen changes the day his father pointedly tells him to be a “good boy” (33). This subtle indictment alludes to the wedge that Catherine is driving between Dave and Stephen. Once Catherine starts withholding food from Dave, Stephen sneaks Dave scraps behind Catherine’s back. Increasingly, Dave becomes a source of tension between his parents. When Stephen buys a Christmas present for Dave, Catherine accuses Stephen of “undermining her authority” (38). These tensions lead to Stephen’s increased alcoholism, which he uses to sedate himself and blind himself to the realities of Catherine’s abusive behavior toward Dave.

Pelzer vividly describes several incidents when Stephen fails to protect him from harm. At the height of the abuse, when Catherine stabs Dave at age 11, Dave tentatively approaches his father to tell him about the incident. After several of Dave’s pleas, Stephen refuses to look up from his newspaper, even though Dave is dripping with blood. Finally, Stephen responds, “Damn it boy, we don’t need to do anything that might make her more upset!” (72). Dave finally realizes that Stephen is fully under Catherine’s control. He loses all faith in and respect for his father. Having lost the support of both his parents, Dave understands that it is now up to him to ensure he heals from this life-threatening injury. Dave later dresses his now infected wound, feeling proud of himself and “like a character in a comic book” for surviving (79).

Throughout the book Dave uses school as a survival tool, both literally and metaphorically. According to Dave, the classroom became his “only hope of escape” (42). As a young child, he uses school work to alleviate the misery of his family life. School is also a space where he is free from his mother’s manipulations and abuses. As a result, Dave often acts “wild” on the playground (36). Though he does well on his coursework, he develops a reputation as a disruptive child and is often sent to the principal’s office. Because his mother does not allow him new clothes or proper baths, the other students tease Dave for his attire and smell. Despite these struggles, Dave uses his school time as an opportunity to hunt for sustenance, stealing food from the cafeteria or his fellow students. Though his relationship with his schooling is fraught and complicated, it is ultimately through the administrators at Thomas Edison Elementary School that Dave is freed from his abusive mother. These administrators turn Dave in to the Daly City Police Department, who in turn put Dave in the custody of the San Mateo Juvenile Department.