A DAY OF WEEPING SUMMARY.docx

**Title:** A Day of Weeping **Author:** Benjamin Nicholls **Text Type:** Short Story The short story, A Day of Weeping, is a story about a Cook Island family. The father was an alcoholic and was very abusive towards his wife. One day when their eldest son was coming back home, after a day\'s work...

**Title:** A Day of Weeping **Author:** Benjamin Nicholls **Text Type:** Short Story The short story, A Day of Weeping, is a story about a Cook Island family. The father was an alcoholic and was very abusive towards his wife. One day when their eldest son was coming back home, after a day\'s work at their plantation, there was something happening in their family home as multiple people from the village gathered around. Teiva, who was the eldest son, asked what was going on and his little brother filled him in saying that their mother had been beaten up by their father. Teiva was mad at his father for this as this wasn't the first time it had happened. Teiva thought that it was about time they had done something about this issue; because Teiva was fed up with his mother being poorly treated by his father. So Teiva wanted to get away as far as they could away from their abusive father. Teiva, his mother and his brother were offered to stay at a relative\'s house for the night just so that Terekino, the father, wasn't able to harm them during the middle of the night. In the middle of the night Teiva was woken up by a sudden voice that sounded like it was screaming out for help. Teiva goes out in the dark to find that the cry for help was coming from their house and the lights of their cook house was on and people had gathered around to see what was going on. When Teiva got closer to the scene he was informed by a fellow villager that his horse had kicked his father; breaking his ribs and also given him a swollen face. Teiva wasn't actually bothered by this at all as he thought that his father deserved it. His father was then sent to the hospital and was in there for a good 2 weeks. During his time in the hospital Teiva's mother had planned to get boat tickets and travel far away as they could away from Terekino. The day came around for Teiva and his mother and brother to pack up and leave the Island and Terekino was still lying in hospital. When Terekino received the news that his wife and kids were leaving the island for good; he ran out of the hospital and made his way to the wharf where the villagers were farewelling everyone who was leaving. A loud cry had bursted out and everyone had turned to see Terekino struggling to make his way to the wharf to stop the boat from leaving with his famliy. As the boat was leaving Terekino had kneeled and just started crying even more begging for the boat to return with his family but his famliy was free at last. An important lesson to learn from this was that if you do bad things towards others, bad things will happen to you. This was seen in the story where Terekino brutally beat his wife up and then later on in the story he was kicked by a horse. Just like that famous saying "What goes around comes around." As a result of Terekino's brutal actions towards his wife; his wife had enough of it and said to her two boys "I have three tickets for the boat. We are leaving tonight." I can relate to this in a way where I grew up with a certain relative who was an alcoholic and beat up his wife. It even got to a point where he was reported by the neighbours and was arrested too and was sent to jail for a decent amount of time. His wife had enough and wanted to move in with other relatives and keep her children safe as they were so young and she just didn't want her children to watch her go through something so painful. This also got me thinking about family abuse. Most Polynesian families are known for family abuse and alcoholic relatives. I've never liked being around my alcoholic relatives or being around my relatives when a fight was about to break out. I never liked the idea of family abuse either; it just didn't seem like something that should've have been happening in these families. It isn't ok for someone you love to beat you up because they want to take their anger out on you; especially when being under the influence of alcohol. So when these things happen you shouldn't be surprised when your family decide to move away from you. So if you want to carry on treating people with disrespect and abusing them because you\'re angry with something else; don't be surprised when they finally had enough of your rudeness and decide to leave you. So start treating people like you want to be treated like everyone else says. Because if you don't change; it will get to a point where you will be left alone with no one by your side when you're in need of support.