Eli the Good: Book Review
The book Eli the Good by Silas House details the summer of ten-year-old Eli Book during the summer of 1976. Eli's family is showing signs of fragmenting. His father is suffering from PTSD and still experiences flashbacks from Vietnam. His mother tries to ignore things and smooth over the rifts that are occurring in the family. His adolescent sister Josie is rebelling against parental control. Eli's few sources of comfort can be found in his friendship with a local girl named Edie; the natural world, and popular culture. There is a constant tension between the beauty of the natural world and the ugliness of the human world, between how things really are and how Eli wishes them to be.
The story takes place during the bicentennial year, and there is a stark contrast between the patriotism and pride in the American government is displaying and the suffering Eli's father is experiencing inside. Eli is wakened by his father's screams at night. Instead of the secure father figure...
"The war slid right back down his body as if he were stepping into a new set of clothes" (House 254). Eli's sister Josie sharply criticizes the American government her father sacrificed his sanity for: "Let's spend thousands to celebrate two hundred years of stealing from the Indians" (House 164). Later, it is revealed in the book that Josie is not her father's biological child, unearthing a dark secret that lies behind the surface of a happy, American family.
Despite his father's emotional difficulties and the fact that Eli's feelings are often tumultuous as well, the book portrays many happy childhood memories of Eli riding his bike in the woods, playing with Edie, and looking up at the pure sky where he lives. The fact that the story takes place in a rural area makes the residents of the town all the more reluctant to talk about Vietnam in a realistic and open fashion, but also exposes Eli to a…
