Power and Control

Within the context of all the characters’ interpersonal dynamics, the author explores the ways in which power structures define and dictate human relationships. The reader might find evidence of these explorations in Tony and Tammy’s relationship, Tony and Oliver’s relationship, and Oliver and Tammy’s relationship. Because these three characters are primary, the author centralizes their complex struggles for power or control over one another. For example, because Tony is Tammy’s father, he does not feel he needs to “control [his] temper” with his daughter (13). When Kim scolds him in Chapter 1 for unleashing his rage on Tammy yet again, Tony is frustrated, believing that he must “parent her” and that children need “discipline and boundaries” (13). For Tammy, however, her father’ anger and violence feel like his desperation for power and control, rather than the productive enforcement of boundaries. This is why...