When abuse is generational, how does one stop the cycle? In the novel by Colleen Hoover, It Ends With Us. Lily and Ryle are faced with challenges within their relationship that they never thought they would have to face. Although the love that Lily and Ryle have for each other is extremely strong, the thoughts of the abuse her mother faced from her father as a kid resurfaces to her mind as she has to make the choice of staying with the man she loves or leaving the abuse in the past for good. Growing up in an abusive household can really take a toll on someone. The relationship of Lily, her mother, and father revolved around the classic roles of positive and negative characters.
Most Importantly, Lily embodies the positive character traits
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Lily’s mother was stripped of her limits by Lily’s father and her sense of independence was gone. As Lily’s mother said, the more she accepted her husband's apologies, the more her tolerance for the abuse went up, which ultimately resulted in Lily’s mother being somewhat of a villain while her father was alive.
Lastly, Lily’s dad plays the role of an antagonist perfectly as he shows the reader what a negative force looks like. Lily continuously shows the reader of the book the violent temper and the mental and physical abuse that they had to encounter with Lily's father.
“As much as I hated him most of the time, I still longed for more of these moments with him. If he could just always be the guy he was capable of being in these moments…”
Only once in this whole book was there a moment between Lily and her father mentioned that Lily did not completely hate her father. Each time Lily’s father was brought up it was only to explain the pain he brought upon their family. The lack of interest in his daughter also caught my attention when there was little to no interaction with them. The hatred you must have for someone like your own father to not have one nice thing about him, not even at his own funeral shows the visible and invisible damage Lily’s father caused to his
Lily's childhood was traumatic, as her father abused her mother, which has much to do with her staying in an abusive relationship. Lily and Ryle get married, and soon to follow, Ryle begins to regularly abuse Lily out of jealousy, anger, sadness, and his problems. When Lily loses hope and trust, she turns to her past boyfriend, Atlas Corrigan. Atlas was a boy
Lily had given up, she lived her entire life with the idea that her mother
It was not easy for Lily to live in the household of a father with no care for her. Everyday she felt as if she was never loved. Lily never had knowledge T. Ray as a father, “ because ‘Daddy’ never fit him-.”(Kidd, 2). T. Ray would never talk about Lily’s mother and had told her that her mother never wanted her. Lily was all alone to put the puzzle pieces
Lily’s idolization of her mother is shown in how she describes Deborah’s belongings. A photo, which she see’s her mother's beautiful, gloves that Lily holds as if it were actually hers, and a photo of the black Mary which she keeps close. Right before Lily finds out T. Ray was right in saying Deborah left them Lily says she never believed him and she wants to prove him wrong. Characters with flaws are a lot more sympathetic and likeable to the reader instead of the perfect flawless unrealistic ones. Kidd got the reader to understand these flaws with how August tried to explain the situation to Lily, “All she did was cry for a week.
This passage shows Lily embracing the love of a mother in forms she thought impossible. For all she craved was a mother figure, but what she got was so much better. This is because Mary will stay with her for the long run. Giving love support and strength along the way. Being more of a mother than Lily could have asked for.
People spend so much time wondering why the women don't leave. Where are all the people who wonder why the men are even abusive? Isn't that where the only blame should be placed” (Hoover 274)? Although Lily had been suffering from abuse for a while, her stress and desire to escape is higher than ever after finding out that she is pregnant with Ryles baby. She not only has to find the courage to escape for herself, but now for her expected newborn daughter.
Her mother died when she was 4, and Lily was the one to kill her. Her dad, T-Ray, was a terrible parent to her too, because he hit her. She also have to live with the guilt that she ended her mother’s life. “There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful.” a quote by August, page 50.
Her father, whom she loves, never shows any affection for her, and she has reason to believe that her mother, whom she so desperately wants to have loved her, abandoned her before Lily accidentally killed her. This complicated relationship to love leaves her without a clear idea of whether love can be a positive force in life at all, and she reaches the extreme, negatively charged opinion that the fiery passion of love destroys the world. Later in the novel, when Lily learns that love is not only about rejection and longing, her opinion of love softens a great deal, although she never recants on these poignant, passionate
Lily’s mother is the cause of much of her grief, through her journey she imagines her mother in a way that does not accurately depict who her mother truly was. When she finds out what her mother actually was she, “I stood
Lily is constantly aware of her cruel and abusive father. Her father, T-Ray always ignores Lily and tells her that when she goes to work the peach stand she
Lily feels that these words were directed to her and felt like a bad person for the mistake of killing her mother. In a newspaper written by The Newcastle Herald, a statement stands out to the resemblance of this book and what the author is trying to show. As it states, “Lily finds solace in the guidance of the senior sister August, who holds the key to her past and slowly the rhythm of a new life with its funniness and sweetness is born…” THis helps to support my statement that Lily’s happiness and funniness grows when meeting and spending time with these girls. This was just the thing the young girl needed because at the time, Lily was feeling deep guilt for her actions.
Continuing, another theme that led us through Lily’s adventure of growing up was her discovering how important storytelling was. She was going through gruesome horrid things, and when she read things like Shakespeare she realized how important it was because it helped her escape to a fantasy world for a little bit of time. Lastly, Lily learns the power of the female community. Lily grew up without a mother, so for a large chunk of her life she didn’t know the real power the female community held.
Lily barely knew her own mother, and T. Ray, her father, abuses her and could care less. Lily gets to experience the parent-child love from Rosaleen. Kidd asserts that the interaction between different races can lead to loving
Although Lily is young, she feels that she has the right to make this statement because she has already experienced so much in her life. With that being said, people may judge Lily because of what she says or does but that is because not everyone knows about
Two of her sisters have this problem and it has genuinely affected August for better or worse. Lily’s father, T-Ray, deals with his mental illness by using violence and taking his anger out on Lily because of what happened with his wife Deborah. This causes Lily to feel unloved by her father. In the beginning of the story, Lily runs away from home to escape her tragic life with T. Ray.