Friday, February 22, 2008
Rules of the Game
Well, at least this story wasn't as bad as the first one. I sort of found it interesting how a little girl was completely owning 50 year old guys who probably played chess everyday. I had some issues with how Waverly's parents ran the household. They let the boys do all of the work while she studied chess. I think that it should have been made clear that Waverly had to keep all of her responsibilities at home while also studying chess with the occassional pass from chores before a big tourney. The way that her parents pushed her reminded me a lot of how the infamous child star parents pushed their children to be great almost to the point where they didn't really have a childhood. As much as Waverly liked chess I still think that she sort of missed acting like a kid because she was naturally absorbed by chess, but there were also times when her parents (chiefly her mom) would push her to study more and become better. Sometimes I can understand this because her family was very poor and needed a way to put food on the table, but I think that they parents sort of abused Waverly's talents in order to gain money rather than let the child learn to love the game for joy and fun with a little money on the side. It got so bad that Waverly ran away for a while which is completely understandable to me. I think I would do the same no matter if I LOVED the thing they were forcting me to do. Wether you love it or not, there is still extra pressure put on someone in that way because often times it becomes more than just a game. Like I said it was better than the first one, but it still wasn't anything that special.
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Joe, you mentioned the child stars in your paragraph. I put the exact same thing into my paragraph. As soon as I read that book and knew I had to blog, I knew that was the connection that I was going to make. I do not understand how a woman could push her child that hard. Some motivatoin from your parents is nice, to an extent. Waverly's mother pushes her way to far until she eventually goes over the edge. It made me angry to see her mother ruining her childhood. Of course it would be great to be a champion chess player, but if it was not fun to me I would not even be doing it in the first place. I am glad that Waverly finally stood up for herself and ran away. Hopefully that will knock some sense into her crazy mother. I deffinitally had the same reaction to this story as you did.
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