Seventh Meeting: Subway Tracks

My analysis for this meeting was kind of weak, I realized. However, this is sort of justifiable, seeing as what Chris did for the majority of the reading was groaning and jumping into active subway tracks to find his pet rat. Because of this lack of meaning, our discussion was not very deep. However, since we had a shorter class time due to the vocabulary test, our discussion stayed on the book the entire time.
I was very passionate about Chris' behavior during the meeting, however. One must wonder what they taught in his school if they didn't include anything about not jumping onto active subway tracks. I found this point in the story completely idiotic, as Chris knew that the subway train would be coming, and that if he jumped onto the tracks, he would get run over. However, because his pet rat ran onto the tracks, he decided to get it and made me loathe him a bit more. Liana answered that he just couldn't see anything but getting Toby back. Still, though, my respect and empathy for the character has dropped.

Scribe Post #2

Today's main discussion was on Chris' relationship with his parents. We got quite deep into this topic. There was an argument today about their parenting skills. Jerry said hat both of the parents were terrible, while Liana stated that they tried their best. In the end, a consensus was made, that both parents try, but they often fail. An interpretation of their viewing of Chris was made today: that Chris' father sees him as someone who will fail often because of his autism, and so everything must be made easy for him. This allows for Chris' father to be more patient with him, and thus have a better understanding and relationship. However, this also leads to him not seeing Chris as a son, but more as a burden. Chris' mother sees her son as a normal child, and this leads to frustration for her, as he constantly performs under her expectations. Neither parent understands who Chris really is, a child who is very good at math and science and will probably benefit society as a scientist in his later years. They view him as an unmanagable son who can't understand feelings, or go into places with a large amount of people, like a normal child.
There was a new understanding of Chris' relationship with his father that was reached. Chris does not actually "love" his father; he sees him as a caretaker. He trusts him, but, as seen from when Mr. Boone revealed that he was the one who killed Wellington, once that trust is broken, Chris takes an extreme feeling of fear for his father. He neither loves his mother either: when Chris does not have his father to depend on, he goes to his mother instead. The group agreed that Siobhan is more of a mother figure to him, but because she is at school, he does not view her directly as his mother.