For this Discussion, I have divided you into small groups. After reading “The Battle

For this Discussion, I have divided you into small groups. After reading “The Battle for My Body,” by Richard Rhodes, I’d like you to post one comment about it. This comment should be at least three sentences long.
Consider these ideas:
The details Rhodes assembles about his stepmother add up to a warning about her that his father does not see–or heed. In what ways is Anne an inappropriate choice as a partner for a man with two young sons? Consider her heavy application of make-up, her menacing voice, her marital history, her age, and her childlessness. Is she interested in becoming a mother?
Anne erupts in an “outburst of rage” if the boys break one of her rules. In what ways do her beatings go beyond the usual corporal punishment of the times, 1947, when plenty of dads took off a belt to swat their sons who misbehaved? What do the beatings communicate to the boys about her authority and about their welcome in her house? Despite the brutality of these beatings, why do the boys find them the least horrible of her various types of abuses?
How is forcing the boys to eat foods they did not like a particularly weird and degrading action? Rhodes notes that parents often force kids to eat food they do not like, but what are those foods and why do the parents do this? How are Anne’s actions different from those of a loving parent–and what does it mean when the boys describe her as a “disease” with all the implications of unwanted invasion and illness? 
For Rhodes at age ten, using the bathroom at night was a necessity, and Anne’s decree that he could not use it as needed created a terrible dilemma for him–he tries distracting himself with stories and numbers, he tries urinating out the window, and finally he settles on urinating into mason jars that he hides and tries to empty when Anne is not around. Each one of those methods makes him feel terrible in a different way. Can you comment on some of the emotions he goes through at night?
Rhodes’s father’s cowardice in the face of his wife’s abuse of his boys is one of the reasons the abuse is allowed to continue. Where do we see examples of the father refusing to intervene and why do you think he does not intervene? What would be the consequences for him if he did? 
At the end of the article, Rhodes describes how Anne still haunts him forty years later.  He wakes in the night, cramping and in pain. Who has won the battle for his body?
Your comment may address any one of these issues–or discuss some element of the article I have not mentioned above.
You will receive a Complete if you have done the post for this article and an Incomplete if you have not. Posting a comment is one of the two assignments for this unit that will raise your paper grade by one-half grade.