Alienation

9 Pages 2277 Words

he news from his mother and he realizes that he will never truly belong in any home.
Left feeling hopeless and without anything solid to cling on to Johnny allied himself with a local gang. Finally, it seems he has found refuge even if it is not inside a warm home. Johnny depends on the gang for the essentials that he needs to survive such as food and shelter. This is a very comforting because he knows that it would be impossible to endure the cold hard city streets by alone. Living on the streets with the gang has its appeal at first but it doesn’t take long for Johnny to lament for the comfort of a real home and family. As the story progresses it seems as if he will never be able to escape the tight hold that the gang has grasped him with. He is now bonded to the gang and owes them some sort of loyalty because of all the crimes that they have committed together.
However, the situation does an about face when the gang learns that he is having second thoughts about his involvement with them; they become hostile because they fear that he will go to the police and turn them in. At this point Johnny has come to realize that stealing from innocent people is wrong but at the same time he feels that he is left with no other choice. As a result they resist his attempts to leave the gang while at the same time singling him out as a traitor. Ironically, he is again alienated from the gang that he first sought protection when his actual family left him alone. Johnny yearns for love, decency, and most of all the stability of a family life. The family that he thought to be his own was ready to pass him off to another; in his eyes this was the epitome of betrayal.
Once he finds himself running on the streets, he is drained of all the decency that he had once known. He breaks into a newsstand for a few...