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Cal And Con In Judith Guest's Ordinary People

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The novel “Ordinary People”, written by Judith Guest, has multiple relationships that exist with Cal and Con. The one relationship unseen till the end of the book is the one between Karen and Beth. Both characters interact with Conrad and treat him the same way. They spend the entire novel desperately pushing the past out of their lives. This was shown as the story progressed. Beth was static never changing, always pushing Con away. Karen also did just that after Con talk about how they spent time together in the hospital. The story proves just how much these characters ended up impacting both Calvin and Conrad. The first evidence of how these two are related is in the beginning of the novel. Beth refuses to hold a conversation with Conrad and deliberately avoids him.She treats him as if he is a burden and forces Calvin into the parental figure that is constantly caring and worrying about Con. She drives the relationship between Cal and Con. Then when Con and Karen are together, Karen is constantly avoiding the conversation about the hospital, which is the one thing Con wants to talk about. She tells him that “Negative thoughts” are not healthy. This is what leads her to leave and Con immediately feels like it won’t work between them. This results in a relationship between Con and Jeannine. Both Beth and Karen drive the relationships …show more content…
Then as the question is asked again she says he is fine. She later flips out and states “God, I am sick of talking, talking about him” (pg 236). She at this point breaks down crying because now she has to talk about the one person she has refused to talk about the entire novel. She has avoided Conrad since he tried to take his life, and she simply felt the only way to cope was to avoid him. This is one way she and Karen are related in the novel. They pushed Con away when he needed them and they ended up

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