What Defines Your Character?

Growing up, everyone goes through the same dilemma: what defines who I am? What we fail to realize, however, is that the answer is right in our faces, whether it be in the kitchen, in the garage, in the master bedroom, or even sitting beside you in the living room. The answer is our own flesh and blood: our parents. Our parents are the basic outline of who we are. Unfortunately, in some cases, people don’t always want this to be true.
Throughout the book The Price of a Child, you meet a family known as the Quicks, who helped free protagonist Mercer Gray from her brutal master, Jackson Pryor. In this family, you are specifically introduced to a man named Tyree Quick. As far as first impressions go, he seems to be a hardworking, honest, and trustworthy man. He works hard to support the rest of the Quicks, especially since his father, Emmanuel Quick, had a stoke and now doesn’t seem to function as well as he use to. In addition, Tyree dedicates a good chunk of his time to the Vigilance Committee, a determined group of individuals who are devoted to freeing enslaved African Americans from their cruel and unjust masters. What a well-respected man. Kind of like his father, who still works even though some days he is condemned to a wooden chair, trying to find his strength again. The Quicks, with “Manny” and Tyree as what we can refer to as the “alpha males” of the Quick Clan, seem to be quite the tight, functional unit.
Later on, we start to find out a few dirty secrets about Tyree and Manny. Tyree married his brother Roland’s widow. But, he married her because of his yearning sexual desires for her. Apparently, both him and his wife, Blanche, are incredibly unhappy. As for Manny, he must of married his wife, Della, for the same appalling reason because after a few subtle hints have been dropped, we find out that he has a mistress by the name of Rachel, who he attempts to see whenever he can, often forcing his sister known throughout the book as Aunt Bea, who has an incredulous liking to alcohol, to carry messages between the two. In addition, he has a history of abusing his wife. And it gets better: a huge sum of the family’s money went to Rachel’s brand new house.
Now, what does his father’s lying cheating have to do with Tyree himself? Well, since Tyree first saw Mercer Gray at the docks, he fell for her, quite hard. In the meantime, he builds up a particular disgust toward his father. For not only giving someone who isn’t even blood related a better life then they have with their money, but through it all, after years of his mother, father and himself slaving away, where is all of the money? The whole family has been working like dogs for years, and his father never showed20a genuine concern for the family’s financial issues? Throughout the book, you witness Tyree telling his father and himself that he will never be like his father, never beat or cheat his wife or cheat the family out of their money. In the end, he cheated his wife with Mercer.
In synopsis, the more Tyree fought, the more Tyree became his father. Even Aunt Bea said to Tyree at one point in the book “You are the new Manny”. But, becoming what we truly are isn’t something we can fight. The more he fought, the more inevitable it became as poisons of his parent’s mistakes started to overtake him. I’m not saying that we are always condemned to repeat our parent’s faults and turn into our parents per say because everyone is their own person. But it’s either you accept them for what they are, or your bitterness and resentment towards them will turn their faults into who you are.