Escalante J

Jenny Escalante
English 1301.221 W E
Ms. Stacey Burleson
October 31, 2007
Essay #3

Society puts a lot of pressure on how people look, act, and even feel. This starts as soon as a person enters this world. The way a child is raised plays an enormous role in how the child will turn out as an adult. Lester Billings’ mother was too strict with him and overprotective. In “Boogeyman”, Lester kills his own kids by letting a monster murder them and by not being a good father. He is the man of the house and expects his wife to do whatever he says. He knows the boogeyman is after him, but he lets the monster kill his children to try to save himself.
The “American Dream” is the desire to succeed in life and raise a family. Sometimes people have goals and when they don’t achieve them, bad things happen. In “The Last Rung on the Ladder,” Larry’s sister Katrina longs for a family. Her brother is too busy to visit her and her two marriages have ended in divorce with no children. Katrina ends up swan-diving off a building just like she used to do in sports when she was a kid.
The only bad thing is that every single person in the world has his/her own version of the “American Dream”. Financial security and luxury items has a different meaning for one person. For others, murder and evil are sought. In “Suffer the Little Children”, Miss Sidley kills twelve of her students because she thinks they are aliens. She is very strict, but she is a good person. She just thought it was necessary to kill the twelve children.