Ttc Delaney Mossbacher Essay Example

makes up for the lack of physical power he could ever possibly utilize or exert. Not necessarily the power of force, but to Delaney, having control and perfection gives him the power of presence that in a ways makes up for his lack of societal skills in which he does not possess. With all the power Delaney engulfs by being in control, he created what seemed to be the perfect life that wasn’t always there.

Delaney didn’t want to be on his own. That’s why he’d got married again; that’s why he’d been eager to take Jordan on, and the dogs, and all the joys and responsibilities of domestic life. He’d been on his own for eight years after he divorced his first wife, and that had been enough” (225 Boyle). Delaney did not enjoy his lifestyle he was living; therefore he controlled the situation to make it accommodate his needs although it took eight years to do so. From the time Delaney had taken to move on with his life, it has ecome well known that he is also an individual whom does not like change; change that can influence negative things in life, change that can throw him off of his routine, and change that can disrupt his controlled perfection.

Having his life inevitably changing means that he would no longer be in control, and to be straightforward, Delaney is terrified of losing his regulation and power in life. The changes in just his community alone—the gate, the wall, the coyote, the Mexicans—are driving Delaney insane with the lack of control he can disperse.

However, through this change, Delaney had

gained an instant family which seemed to be perfect. That is besides the fact that Kyra is her own controller, rather than being manipulated, she is the manipulator, the boss, the head of their house-hold, and she wears the pants in the relationship. Delaney being the individual that he is, strongly dislikes that quality in her, however he settles to have no control over her to be able to have control over everything else.

Delaney, in a sense of way needs, wants, and must have control over everything in his life to make up for the lack of control he has over Kyra. As though Delaney’s main motivations in life are control and perfection, the underlying motive is the fear of losing control of everything else on top of Kyra. Furthermore, Delaney is an exceedingly unique individual whom idolizes nature, the environment, the wildlife, his surrounding, and who abnormally turned those untouchable items into materialized objects.

Delaney, whom was raised in Peekskill, New York, a town that is full of higher class citizens, well-paying jobs, but with the lack of an open environment or tranquil nature, paradoxically is one that is fascinated by nature, almost to a point of infatuation, and that could be the reason why he took control and moved across the country to a rural area, an area where he could be at one with nature and could camouflage himself and find his niche in life.

He is an unsociable human being that looks to nature and the environment rather than seeking out peers because nature is something he can easily control and manipulate, as for people, he cannot.

Delaney views nature and the environment as his, all his, and only his, and when someone steps on “his” boundaries and trespasses “his” territory, “his” nature, “his” environment, Delaney becomes an ignorant, introverted narcissist, which in a ways brings me to the idea of Delaney to some extent as being materialistic.

Not so much being materialistic like the astronomical majority in today’s society, but more so as how he idolizes “his” environment and the surrounding nature as if it were a prized possession. To Delaney, nature is worth more than any money can ever buy him and that is why he is sought out to be materialistic. In other cases with different individuals, they are scrutinized as being materialistic because of the connection they tend to have with electronics and other valuable items.

However, in Delaney’s case, he is obsessive and fanatical about a thing that you cannot even hold, or put a price tag on. “The waterfall trickles. The coyotes sing. I have a handful of raisins and a blanket: what more could I want? All the world knows I am content. ” (Boyle 79) Nature is, in other terms, free and it will always be there. So to go as far as being possessive and profane about his environment, is to some degree, certifiable. The amount of devotion and affection Delaney acquires for nature is in essence, to make up to the lack of societal skills he maintains.

When, and if, Delaney ever does lose control of his life, nature and the environment will be the only things he will still be able to have control over, unlike friends and

his family, which at any time could be subject to change—change that Delaney does not want, change that he will have no control over, change that could result in him losing everything besides the environment, and that is why Delaney is so devoted to nature and idolizes it in a sense to become materialistic. Correspondingly, in a way, Delaney’s materialism gradually metamorphoses to racism.

The control Delaney partakes in his environment, is one of the scarce things he retains, and when Delaney becomes aware of the Mexicans “living, camping, dwelling, making the trees and bushes and the natural habitat of Topanga State Park into their own private domicile, crapping in the chaparral, dumping their trash behind rocks, polluting the stream and ruining it for everyone else. ” (Boyle 11), he became livid, infuriated, enraged with anger and hate—anger and hate that only grew in comparison to an undesirable tumor in the midst of his cranial cavity, all because he had no control at that point in time.

He was slowly fighting a misplacing battle with the Mexicans over the environment and nature, and Delaney was in the process of losing control—control that he must have in life to keep sane—and with that fear of lack of regulation, he became assertive with his thoughts towards the Mexicans whom were trespassing his boundaries in his forte in life, otherwise nature. Not only did the Mexicans pollute his environment, his nature, his niche, but the compulsory thoughts they fed to Delaney, polluted his mind as well. “God, how he hated that sort of thing—the litter alone was enough to set him off.

How many times

had he gone down one trail or another with a group of volunteers, with the rakes and shovels and black plastic bags? And how many times had he come back, sometimes just days later, to find the whole thing trashed again? There wasn’t a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains that didn’t have its crushed beer cans, its carpet of glass, its candy wrappers and cigarette butts, and it was people like this Mexican or whatever he was who were responsible, thoughtless people, stupid people, people who wanted to turn the whole world into a garbage dump, a little Tijuana(Boyle 11).

Delaney use to have at one point in time, the diminutive control over the environment by allocating the duties of community service, cleaning up, and presenting nature with its true beauty, however the Mexicans terminated the whole progression only to deliberately make it ten times worse than before, and the battle that Delaney once fought was ceasing to an end. The fear that he had formerly dreaded of losing his control over the environment, the fear that surfaced his subliminal thoughts of racism, the fear that turned him into a hypocrite, was finally brought to reality.

Whether the situation involves hypocrisy, materialism, racism, the subject of change, or the strive for perfection, Delaney acquires these all through control. He is an individual that is so engulfed by his power to control every aspect of his life, that he comes across as superficial, which could preferentially be a choice of his to hide how vulnerable he truly is as a human being. Being vulnerable only leads to disappointment and nonsuccess, which means he

will be in a state of relinquishment, a state of deficiency and incompleteness, a state of losing control or having zero existence of control in his life.

And since Delaney needs, wants, and must have control over his life he accepts his superficiality. Though control and perfection are Delaney’s main motivations in life, the underlying motive that actuates them would be the fear of losing and surrendering his containment and precision that he so deeply tries to hold on to, thus creating the situations listed above turning Delaney from the once known protagonist to the main antagonist by justification. T. C. Boyle had created Delaney to represent the majority of America’s population.