English 112

09/23/2013

In this essay I want to elaborate about a television show that was aired in 1957, called “Leave it to Beaver”. This show was based on an all American family trying to keep their youngest son Theodore Beaver out of trouble. On May 4th, 1957 an episode was aired about Theodore and his older brother Wally. That episode was called Brotherly Love. In this essay I would like to discuss about the admiration of a younger brother. When you have an older sibling often at a young age you use them as your idol, almost as if you are their personal God. They are essentially the cool kid at your school that you model yourself after. You want to dress, speak and even eat like them. But at some point one of the siblings find that this admiration is often easily converted into worship that leads the older sibling to believe that they are capable of psychologically control the other. In the episode Brotherly Love, Wally the older brother started to take advantage of young Theodore’s innocence because he saw that his younger brother was trying to emulate him. An example of his manipulation would be when he directed Theodore to clean his room and do his laundry if he wanted to follow in his footsteps. This unfortunately lasted for only so long before Theodore realized that he was being taken advantage of. He decided that he does not need to listen to his older sibling as they both came from the same womb, or something of that matter. This to me is often how sibling rivalry occurs, as it is also the point where the siblings’ relationship goes through its roughest of times. I have heard of people being in their thirties that are still bitter from growing up enduring a sibling relationship. Some that feel their relationship can never be sane and have accepted the fact that as siblings they just do not like each other. I could relate to the admiration Theodore had