Adults in this extract are failures as role models in life for children. They misuse their authority, creating an adverse effect rather than a healthy one on the children. The adults in the extract are seen to perceive themselves as morally superior, physically violent and also depicted as bullies to the children. It is not what an adult should be doing to children, much less being much younger than the adults themselves.
At the dinner table, it was obvious that the adults were bullies to the children. The adults were obviously bullying the children and this is shown when the narrator said that “if they would have left me alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone.” This shows that he had been a victim of constantly bullying like a child who in school is constantly bullied by a person who is much stronger than him and that victim would certainly hope that the bully would just leave him alone and stop pressurizing him for any of his desires. Also, the adults, or otherwise known as the bullies, always “stick the point into me.” This shows that in everything that they do, they always include the narrator, in which it has become a habit to them to constantly bully the narrator. This also emphasizes that the adults were irritating and constantly annoying the narrator, such that the narrator believes that they were mocking him and jeering at him every time. Not only that, at the dinner table, the adults were having a conversation and the narrator “knew he (one of the adults) was going to lug me in” to the conversation. This reiterates my point on that the adults always made the narrator the main focus of their topic and jeer at him and mock him. By misusing their authority as an adult, over a small, innocent child, it definitely brings to show how children were bullied by the adults.
The adults at the dinner table were also physically violent to the children. It is depicted when the narrator said that there was a “Pumblechookian elbow in my eye”. This embodies the fact that the children were constantly subjected to violence and were being physically abused. The adults were also shown to be very violent and they did not care about the welfare of the children nor did they care about the consequences of their actions. They are shown not only to be physically violent but also shown to be unthoughtful and uncompassionate towards the children. Their violent acts had not only caused an emotional distress but also cause the children hate adults even more. Also, at the dinner table, the narrator is also depicted to be abused when he sat at an “acute angle of the tablecloth with the table in my chest.” He would be injured heavily and this would fall under the adults being physically abusive.
Another point that would be worth mentioning is that the adults felt and perceived themselves as morally superior over the children. The example shown is that the narrator got “so smartingly touched up by this moral goads.” This reemphasizes on my point that the narrator was painfully abused by these adults who were in fact very arrogant to perceive themselves as morally superior and also that the adults were in fact the trouble-makers of the moral world. They only perceived themselves as morally superior because they feel that they are much more mature than the children. However, they are simply just ignorant and just more immature than the children. They themselves are never grateful and appreciative of everything that has been done for them , yet they themselves feel that they are morally superior and say “be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand” and also when Mrs Hubble said that “Why is it that the young are never grateful?” when they themselves are not grateful. The adults are a role model to the children and whatever that they do, the children just follows, such as them being not grateful. However so, they still see themselves in a different way, being that they are morally superior than the children, which is totally the opposite of what is depicted in the extract.
As shown from the extract, the adults have been failing in trying to educate their children and resort to such indespicable acts, such as physically abusing the children and yet the adults who should be more matured in terms of their acts and thoughts are ironically more immature than the children themselves.
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