1st year Writing - Discussion Questions

1.Coyne, Long Good-Bye
1. Although the author contrasting the mother-son relationship between Jennifer and her son Toby and Stephanie and her son Ellie there is something similar in their relationships too.
The main difference in their relationships is that Jennifer was able to spend the first five years of her son’s life with him, while Stephanie did not have such an opportunity. These affect the mother-son relationship a lot. Maybe that is why there is some hostility while Ellie is playing with her mom. By contrast Toby does not show resentments to his mother. Moreover, Toby seems to miss her mother much more, he even said that he wishes to do something bad in order to go to prison and be with his mommy. I think that Toby is not so angry with his mother, because he had that opportunity to spend much more time of his childhood with mom. The purpose of contrasting these relationships is to show how the lack of mothers’ attention influences on children.
However, there is something similar in these both relationships. Both boys often ask a question if their mother is really a bad guy and why she is in prison now, while their mothers often think how their life with their children could be if they were not in prison.
2. Families in which someone is in prison have some stresses that affect their family life. For example, relatives have to explain to the children that their moms are not sitting in prison because they are bad. Children often have to spend their weekends in prison visiting their mothers; also they can be abused by other children because their mothers are in prison.
The author describes the finishing of this visit, when both prisoners and visitors are tired, but still do not want to say goodbye. And we see, how the author describes that moment when mothers need to say something to their children and they never say what they really want to say to them. In spite of saying that they are sorry and missing them very much, mothers just saying something like “Be good at school”.
The author wants to show that both prisoned mothers and their children...