Ordinary People
...mple of the family trying to heal through communication. Calvin pressures Conrad into calling the doctor because he is still very worried. Conrade holds so much guilt. He tries to bury it, pretending it never happened, but it keeps resurfacing, never leaving him alone. He tells Dr. Berger that he needs help gaining more control (In this way Conrade shows how much like his mother he really is. Calvin states that although Beth and Buck got along better, it is really Conrade who she is most like.) Dr. Berger is the man who Conrad comes to tell everything that troubles him, expressing his true feelings. Not being the polite courteous boy he has been raised as. It is only after his outburst with Dr. Berger that Conrad really gets better. Berger encourages Conrad “just to feel it out.” He realizes who it is he really has to forgive. What Berger did for Con was help him communicate with himself. “ The body never lies.” Calvin and Beth’s marriage is also very important to the communication the Jarrett family. Prior to Buck’s death they were the “ perfect” family, the “ perfect” couple. Their friends used their marriage as a model. Beth’s way of dealing with the pain was to trying to forget about it. What she wanted most was for things to go back to how they were before, and she was more than willing to pretend. “ She is like a child who cries to the moon; She wants things to be the way they used to be, only she will not say it, and he cannot.” She is not strong enough to deal with what was happening. This caused communication problems between her and Cal because he believed that the way to heal the wounds was to talk and discuss feelings. Her unwillingness to face her pain caused them to lose the ability to communicate. It slowly ruins their marriage throughout the book. Beth can not the situation anymore and flips out when Cal suggests they go to counsling. “ What I need is for us to talk to each other! I want to talk to you, Beth, but when I try you freeze me out.” Beth, throughout the novel, appeared as a perpetual actress - one who keeps up appearances of happiness no matter what. In the end of the novel she leaves him, making the reader ponder whether they will ever be able to make amends. Ultimatly the are driven apart by the lies the lies they tell one another and the problems they will not discuss. Lastly and most significantly is the communication of the father- son relationship between Calvin and Conrad. Their relationship begins in ruins. Conrad does not appreciate his father, and Calvin worries about his son to no end. He indulges him in every way he can. His feelings are,you can not have something like what happened happen and not feel the responsibility and guilt. He feels like the lousy father. He goes out of his way to see his son happy, even only for a brief moments would make his day. Dr. Berger, in the end of the novel, has helped this relationship the most. The final chapter focuses on the two talking over their feelings. For the firs...