Uncle

While reading “Uncle”, I was thinking about the question of whether or not children are really listened to. I thought it was particularly interesting that when Jake’s mother asked him if Uncle Paul touched him, he could not answer, although the reader heard his voice throughout the rest of the story. I thought it was even more interesting that he felt that even if he said anything it wouldn’t help, and that he couldn’t really tell his mom what he was thinking. Even though he didn’t say anything, his mom still assumed that his uncle had touched him. In this situation, it really didn’t matter what Jake said, and so I think that adults tend to hear what they want to hear from children. In relation to sexual abuse from children, I think that parents often think that children cannot define it, and so they define it for them as Jake’s mother did.