Hunger
By Kiera and Courtney
Effects on The Walls Family
Hunger affects the walls family because they never know when or from where there next meal is coming. Jeannette says, "We were sort of like the cactus. We ate irregularly, and when we did we'd gorge ourselves." Jeannette and her family rarely ate because they never had the money due to her mothers need for art supplies and fathers alcohol addiction. Jeannette and her siblings were very malnourished. They would usually live off of hot dogs or whatever they could find. When only eating those foods they do not get all the vitamins they need, so they were at a higher risk of diseases and other illnesses than other people of the world that eat correctly. When someone is malnourished it affects the body and the mind. If you do not have enough food you could start to loose your mind and have people hiding, lying, and stealing until they get what they want. Brain and mental health issues can occur when someone does not eat and becomes malnourished. Hunger leads to big development issues in children. The Walls family would eat anything they could find, and they would hide food from each other as a result of there survival instinct. "Brian yanked back the covers. Laying on the mattress next to mom was one of those huge family size Hersey chocolate bars." Considering that all of Rosemary's kids do not eat or have not eaten in awhile she should share all of her food with her kids and not hide it from them. Jeannette, Brian, and Lori looked at their mom in shock, and Brian was the only one who really realized what was happening and took responsibility and distributed a portion of the chocolate bar to each of his siblings. Rosemary was very stingy to hide the chocolate instead of sharing it with her children. Her selfishness is the root of the hunger the children suffer. The affects of hunger on the Walls family caused many conflicts and made the children have to rely on survival instincts to find food.
Hunger in America
Shows that kids living under the poverty line have a less chance to get food.
Malnourisment
Showing how we go up in years that more and more people are getting less nutrition.
Household Hunger
This shows that household hunger has jump majorly 40% in 2007.
Effects on the Characters
Hunger caused the kids to make drastic choices on finding food to eat. Lori's hunger made her choose to eat margarine. Jeannette says, "When i got back from school the next day. I found Lori in the kitchen eating something out of a cup with a spoon. I looked in the refrigerator. There was nothing inside but a half gone stick of margarine." Malnutrition can cause vitamin A deficiency which will lead to blindness. This would explain why Lori needed glasses to see. The lack of good food to keep her body healthy caused her eye site to deteriorate. Other affects of malnutrition are deterioration of mental stability which happens to Maureen. Maureen's personality is sweet in nature and seemed innocent, but Jeannette say's, "Six months later, Maureen stabbed mom. It happened after mom had decided it was time for Maureen to develop a little self sufficiency by moving out and finding a place of her own... and the police arrested Maureen." The lack of good nutrition and the unstable environment when Maureen was a baby caused her to have learning disabilities and mental development problems that was a result of a lack of iodine in her diet. Jeannette and Brian, both, had to look for food. She says, "They would do there best to forge for food- either finding berry's in the wood or digging in the cafeteria trash at school." The children did the best they could to find something to eat each night. Each character had a different way to go find food for their survival. The affects of the children malnutrition caused a lot of health problems from vision to mental health issues. While they did their best to find food to make it through the night, their efforts were not sufficient to sustain a healthy life.
Changes of Jeanette
Hunger affects Jeannette throughout her entire life, whether it was herself, her siblings or her mom hunger affected the health and well being of everyone. The affects on her physically was reflected when she said, "I could sneak into the cafeteria once everyone left and dig through the garbage bails." Digging around in the garbage for something to eat was an example of the desperate measures that Jeannette was forced to use to fine anything to eat. When Jeannette was a small child, she was forced to take care of herself once when she was cooking hotdogs, "Frozen with fear, I watched the yellow-white flames make ragged brown line up the pink fabric of my skirt and climbed to my stomach." She had to live with the burn marks for the rest of her life and this physical deformity affected her self esteem. Jeannette grew up and would that these things did not affect her but in reality the injures of the burn and malnutrition impacted her life. Growing up, Jeannette actually never experience a good meal. On occasion she would have a meal of hotdogs but sometimes the only thing she could fine to eat was margarine and sugar. Jeannette's mother would get on to the kids for always eating the butter when they could have had it on the bread the next day. Jeannette grows up and moves to New York, and hunger is still affecting her life when she sees her mom, " I was sitting in a taxi, wonder if i had over dressed for the evening, when i looked out the window and saw rooting through a dumpster...after ducking down in the taxi so mom would not see, I hated myself- hated my antiques, my clothes, and my apartment. I had to do something, so i called friend of moms and left message." The affects of hunger on Jeannette causes emotional problems for her as an adult when she sees that hunger has never left her life because her mother is still affected by he inability to proved food for herself.
Other information
There are 5 major causes of hunger they are conflict, weather, agricultural differences, population growth, and poverty. The order of severity of hunger would be poverty, conflict, weather, population growth, then agricultural differences. These affects trouble over millions of people a year. Poverty is the major cause because of the families can not get good jobs or have no education to get one. The next major cause is conflict as know as war. Many third world countries can not get food because of war going on in their nation. Those are the two top causes for world hunger. Looking in the link below you can see more information on world hunger.