Mosquito Coast - Write a short character sketches on each of the four children paying special attention to how they relate to their father.

Mosquito Coast Coursework

Question: Write a short character sketches on each of the four children paying special attention to how they relate to their father.

Charlie, as the oldest child in the family, feels responsible for his father. He loves his father and always looks up to him. He believes everything his father says and believes that his father knows everything. You can notice that Charlie also used his father’s words like ‘crapo’, but as time goes on Charlie, is the first to notice Allie’s faults. As time went on, Charlie realized that Allie was not perfect and often lied. One of the examples of this is in chapter 19 where Charlie says, “His lie made me lonelier than any other lie.... His lie scared me…. His lie sickened me…. Separated me from him,” By this we can see that Charlie was losing his trust in Allie, we see this by when Charlie says, “ How much did I really trust Father.” Charlie also realized Allie could not live on natural resources, and he needed material things, Allie was also insecure and depended on others. One sees this when all the children made themselves their own camp called ‘The Acer’, and Charlie realized that they use the natural resources more constructively than father when he says “ We had not brought a boat load of tools and seeds, and we had not invented anything. We just lived like monkeys.” Here we can get the idea that Charlie feels superior to Allie and is proud of how they are living.

This is a preview of the whole essay

After Charlie had discovered that his father was not perfect and that he was a liar he began to despise him and one notices that at the beginning of the book Charlie adored Allie in everything he did, but as the book goes on Charlie starts to hate his father. One example of this is when the family stopped off at the Mr. Struss’ church. At this moment Allie torches the church and immediately runs back to the boathouse ready to quickly run away from the area. Being aware of the opportunity to harm Allie, Jerry and Charlie attempt to kill Allie. Hoping to kill Allie, they seized him, tied him down, and hit him with a hammer, but this only knocked him out. There is a complete contrast between how Charlie felt about Allie in the beginning of the book and how he felt about Allie near the end of the book.

Jerry’s relationship with his father seems to grow as the story goes on. The first time Jerry is mentioned; is when all the children are introduced in the beginning of the book and at that point one does not really know much about Jerry until the family gets to Jeronimo. Until then we are left to believe that he admires his father. But on the incident when father attempts to take ice to the Native Indians we start to see the hate growing in Jerry. When they were trekking up the steep mountain carrying the heavy ice, Jerry asks Allie to stop for a break, but Allie objected to his plea and began to tease him, which made Jerry cry. From this unpleasant incident the relationship between Jerry and Allie seems to get critical.

One of the last times we see Jerry’s hate towards Allie is when Jerry attempted to kill Allie but he wasn’t very successful. The reason why this was one of the last rebellious acts by Jerry towards Allie is because he was too humiliate by the event, or that he was too embarrassed to attempt it again.

The twins, April and Clover are always mentioned together as one. The two twins are young children who do not seem to be very significant especially at the beginning of the book. As you go further into the book you can notice that the twins are mentioned more often. That suggests that they probably become more important. One event we can see this in is when, Charlie and Jerry were on the house boat and were discussing evil things about Allie when the twins over heard them and told on them to Allie. By looking at the incident where they are portrayed as the people who are always on Allie’s side. One can understand this because they are the youngest in the family and that they still haven’t realized that Allie is not the person who Charlie and Jerry think he is.

By: Daniel Eshcol