I felt sympathetic for the protagonist Elba because she was too young to be a mother at the age of fifteen. She was supposed to continue her study; and had a good time with her peers. I understand that teenagers are curious in everything. Especially about the sex because they are living in poverty; of course, it would be natural that adolescents feel the opposite attraction. They are easy to feel in love with someone. As we all know that love is blind, when the girls feel in love with somebody, most of them lost their control and easily give their virginities to their lovers. In addiction, most occasions they forget to use the protection or they do not know how do use protection if they both are adolescents. Like Elbow, she got pregnant because of this. She had an immature husband. So what is the logic of her decision? We should try to understand her situation at that time. In her ages, she wanted to act as adult; and didn’t want to be lonely. This is why her passionate love made her change the destiny. I also think that Elba was a brave person because she did not want to have abortion even if her boyfriend did not want their baby, but she insisted that having abortion.
About Elbow boyfriend, Elbow met her boyfriend Danny in junior high school. I think that he is too young to be a father because he is the same age as Elbow. He can’t be the responsible person to take care of their family. He did not have enough capacity to support his family because he can’t adapt such change in that period. Since he got use to play and hand out with his friends, he did not prepare to have family yet. Therefore, this caused a lot of fighting between Elbow and him. First, he couldn’t find a good job because he did not finish schooling. So, he did not earn enough money to maintain his family’s expenses. Especially when the family has a new born baby, they had to spend a lot of money for the baby. For example, clothing, babies grow fast, they had to change the size of their clothing in approximately every three months. Besides, food and toys also cost a lot of money too. Second, Even if he earned the money, he did not know how to use his money to supply adequate because he was an immature boy. After he got his salary, he would spend his money as fast as possible for his personal enjoyment and seldom brought the money to home. Therefore, they would never have the peaceful family and because of this, he made Elbow frustrated and did not treat their baby with love.
I thought Elba’s parents should be more responsible about her fault. It was because she was inertia in that age; especially in the puberty, she couldn’t control the sentiment and emotion when the love came. Of course, she neither expected to have baby and she wouldn’t obtain prevention of pregnancy. However, Elba’s parents didn’t educate her about that since she knew that children are high risk in living poverty because her mom had the same experience. I think that her mom should use her personal experience to teach her daughter and let her learn the lesson. I did not understand the relationship between her mom and her. I think that if her mom really cared and loved her daughter, she could stop her daughter and did not allow her commit the same mistake as she did. I remember I was seldom allowed to get out at night when I was a teenager. Probably, my parents were too strict. But I understood that they were concerned about my growing up.
About “THE Boy without a Flag”, I think that Elbow parents should be responsible of their children fault because they did not care about their children during their age of poverty. If all parents learn the lesson from Elbow parents, children wouldn’t get suffer as Elbow. They will have a very plenty life.
B-