Generations

I could never forget that one day when me and my two closest friends had a serious conversation. we were in our last year in high school (gr.12), and In Jeong (our Korean friend) was about to leave for Korea to continue her studies. I have always known that she wasn't that close to her father. She shared with us how cruel and useless his father was. ..was always drunk and even brought his mistress home right in front of their mother. i couldn't help but asked her how she felt..and to my surprise she said she didn't care but felt really bad for her mother. while she was sharing, i noticed how strong she was...she showed anger but she never once cried. but there's something that she said that brought me to tears...she wanted her father to die soon so that all their sufferings would end. she wanted so bad for him to disappear in their lives so that she wouldn't see her mother cry again. and my other friend Margaret, felt the same way. after all, her mother has some mental illness and and her dad had a mistress too. i couldn't believe what i heard from them...couldn't believe it came from my dearest friends...i couldn't believe that they were able to hope and desire for such bad things..and i didn't know how to react..i couldn't understand how i felt..i was angry and hurt at the same time. my friends went through all these problems and i felt bad that i couldn't do anything about it. the only thing i could do was to care and be there for them. and i realized the kind of strength they had - the strength that got even stronger while going through tough and painful times...if i was in their condition, i don't think i would be able to handle anything like that...but they were good friends...they did well in school and we only had great memories together. i guess that incident only made us closer and made me realized how blessed i am to have a great family.

i recalled this incident after reading Generations. the girl might have gone through traumatic experiences but i couldn't see any good reason to kill her father...i don't think there's any good reason to kill anyone. you might be having so much anger and bitterness to the person but killing wouldn't answer all that. and i couldn't believe that the girl did not feel any remorse or sorrow. in fact, she seemed relieved after murdering her own father. is she crazy? or just plain wicked? another thing that i didn't get was to why her mother or brothers did not even care...is that possible? i guess what the author was trying to show was that people change when they go through horrible things. that when they have been hurt so bad, they are able to do evil things. but there could be other better ways to get away with gruesome experiences...murder shouldn't be an option. sometimes we just don't comprehend what goes through a person's mind.