Rebel Without a Cause by Robert M. Lindner Read Free Book Online Page A

community is excellent and his affiliations with Polish-American organizations have resulted in firm if taciturn and blunt friendships with men of his own temper and kind. Now, at fifty-three, he is still pursuing his trade, more frequently, however, eyeing pastures he should have cultivated twenty years ago. He claims even at this date an interest in Harold, but investigators note his lack of patience toward his son’s problems.
    Harold’s mother is today as she seems always to have been a symbol of patient and unrequited motherhood, a person who invites sentiment. A beautiful and buxom girl when she married at an early age, she is now a worn and tired woman, a product of housewifely routine and the monotonous drudgery of feeding, caring and worrying for a family in slightly above marginal economic circumstances. Her loyalty to her children and especially to Harold is famous among her acquaintances, and social workers note her over-solicitous, over-protective nature. This she has rationalized by pointing out the social limitations and barriers faced by Harold because of his peculiar physical defect. She is lavish in her statements of affection for the boy and admits to having saved him from pitfalls on many occasions. By all accounts, she is a sensible, intelligent and industrious woman in all affairs but those dealing with her son. She is a voracious reader of cheap romances and an ardent movie-goer, readily moved to tears and easily imposed upon. Her attention has for so long been fixed solely upon her family that she has but few friends; these she visits and entertains regularly with coffee and gossip. Her own family, including her mother, two married sisters and a brother, is bound by ties of mutual dependence in their unrelenting borderland of impoverishment.
    Two younger sisters complete the family group. The elder of these is a pert, vivacious girl of nineteen who works steadily at a factory job and who contributes her entire wages to the parents: the youngest is a schoolgirl, bright and lively, the pet and joy of the old folks.
    The whole family, with the exception of Harold is well regarded by neighbors and friends. They practice the Roman-Catholic faith, own a car and are considered respectable additions to the neighborhood. The section in which they live is a crowded district of foreign-laborer families. They maintain a four-room apartment above a saloon in an old building with a few modern conveniences: rent is twelve dollars a month. The home is clean, modestly furnished in a comfortable if somewhat worn style. Beyond the youngest daughter’s school-books, the mother’s rental library romances, the eldest daughter’s movie-fan pulps, and the Polish language newspaper, there are no books or periodicals in the apartment. A radio and some religious chromos complete the cultural scene.
    Those relatives visited by investigators were cut from the same pattern and along the same lines as Harold’s parents. The family history, so far as it can be traced, is negative for feeblemindedness or mental disorder of any variety, except for traces of alcoholism in the male members of the distaff branch.
    The mother reports that Harold’s birth, assisted by a midwife, was entirely normal following a labor of six hours duration. The child was healthy and there were no abnormal pre- or post-natal circumstances. At the age of one or two, Harold suffered measles, and between two and six other childhood exanthems were experienced. Tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy were performed when he was twelve. Except for these and his eye condition, his health was normal.
    As to the optic disorder, it was the recorded opinion of two physicians whom his mother consulted that the diagnosis was
Nystagmus Amblyopia
resulting from the measles: another consultant diagnosed
congenital defective retinae
incorrectable, with ten per cent normal vision in the right eye and fifteen per cent in the left. The mother reports visits to numerous specialists