For this quarter, I am reading the book While They Slept an in-depth look into why a young teenager would brutally murder his family. It is very detailed and gruesome, and is rather interesting in a morbid kind of way. It describes how Billy Gilley was convicted of a double homicide but left his 16 year old sister, Jody, alone. They both has been abused as children, and the author remarks "Both she and Billy had wished their parents dead"(36). This shows the depth of hatred and a little bit of sympathy to these characters begins to appear. They obviously felt as though there was no hope for people in their circumstances and needed to get out. This is shown clearly when talking about their parents past lives. He remarks " Jody remembers the incident that led to her father's described as if it had been a cartoon misadventure, in which " silly Daddy had driven off a curve and landed on the roof of a house""(44). They are obviously horrible parents, and her father suffers from a bad case of alcholism, which did certainly not help things. It is these kind of parents that makes it seem as though parenting should have certain requirements and not be a given right.
This book reminds me heavily of Night in that it deals heavily with people that have been oppressed and abused, and how they deal with it. The author remarks " Was she responsible for for having failed to prevent the murders?"(47) I can imagine this would wrack Jody with guilt for being almost an accomplice to her brother's horrible deeds, and not doing as much as she could possibly do to prevent it. The author remarks that Jody even had Elie Wiesel in her library at home, which helps show how she wants to know how other people have dealt with her experiences. It also talks about how Billy was abused in both areas of life, when he quit school and started to work for this father. He remarks " Working for his father, Billy endured relentless verbal assualts"(53). Instead of being safe in the school, Billy now could be verbally tormented in every area of his life, which surely contributed to his state of mind, and his pathological need to remove his father from his life.
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When the author says that Billy and his sister both wanted their parents dead, this makes the reader feel bad for the two kids. Their parents seem disfunctional and horrible. I always have sympathy for people that have a bad mother, or father because I can't even imagine how hard it would be. Family is a form of support in most cases. This book seems like it will be very sad and it is about the struggles that Billy and Jody go through with their parents.
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