The book entitled ‘RANT’ presents an oral biography of Buster Casey, a man who became very famous. Buster Casey is the protagonist of Chunk Palahniuk, an author with a huge reputation in wring tamer novels. It is a three hundred and nineteen page oral history book published by Doubleday publishers on 1 may 2007. It falls under novel-satire genre of literature told in English oral biography form. The novel begins and immediately the reader identifies the main character, Buster Casey Landru, also known as “RANT”. He is a deceased man whom various individuals in the entire story discuses the Buster’s life memories and his world. This reflects a conflicting timeline story of all events that occurred in his lifetime.
Born in the suburbs of Middleton town, an environment characterized with the sense of smell all around, young Buster Casey taste advanced feeling of the area than any other human being. A childhood prank that evolved multiple animal organs leading to people being ill made buster acquire the nick name ‘Rant’. The sick victims created a resembling sound of the word ‘rant’ which grew widely and present a synonym for ‘vomit’ apart from Casey’s nickname. In his childhood, Rant discovered an immense wealth and property that enhanced the development of the small town’s economy. Thereafter, Rant became much obsessed with the animal, snake and spider bites in the town and its suburbs. It is after the first time bite by a spider that made Rant discovers the toxic spider’s poison that made him get an erection. This occasion was an excuse enough to let Rant get out of school. Alternatively, Rant made way to acquire an early diploma that further broadens his mind and made him leave the town (Santrock, 2007). Rant arrival to the city gives the reader an overview of what the city life is. The city dwellers are divided forcefully into two distinctive classes. These are Daytimers who are generally respected and the Nighttimmers, community subjected to regular oppression. In this curfew, Rant automatically becomes a nighttimer hence adopting the class’s lifestyle characterized by party crashing demolition derbies that were common in the streets of the city during the night.
The party crashing game was often organized by unanimous entities in a designated window period of equal time intervals. Its main objective was to forcefully crash other players sporting a particular flag. This included Christmas trees kept of roofs of cars or even sporting the word “married” developed a sense of windshield. By playing this game, Rant met Echo Lawrence who was initially just a fellow crasher. The two eventually fall in love and Rant adored Lawrence to an extent they never parted even for a few hours. At that time, Rant began nationwide epidemic rabies that erupted to zombie like initiative. The movement was a call for an insight shot killing of all rabies victims. Rant died in a part crashing event. Millions of people listened and viewed his death on a national television. The proceedings were also live on a radio show named ‘The Graphic traffic’. Contrarily to the people expectations, when the car carrying Rant’s body was opened, his body was missing. This tale raised the speculation about the strange Rant’s fate. People further discussed the society implication with outbreak of rubies. Interviewees suggested that car crashing jars a person in a state of mind outside time. After that occasion, such people go back to kills all their ancestors. They become something more than human beings, described as immortal. A fellow party crasher, Taylor Simms who had unsettling ties with Casey was believed to endure same experiences.
How the book relates to the course material
The lifespan of Rant, the character in the book presents a comprehensive overview of all aspects of developmental psychology. Development psychology refers to the scientific study of life changes that human beings experience in their lifespan. The discipline was initially much concerned with children and infants. However, the field was later extended to cover the changes that occur during adolescent, adult development and aging periods of a human life. The discipline offers an examination of the broad changes of topics of psycho-physiological development processes and cognitive development. These include motor skills, moral understanding, and problem solving skills, language acquisition and identity formation. Human beings undergo these essentials of life span development as explained by John santrock in his book ‘essentials of life-span development’. Personality, conceptual understanding and emotional development are key areas discussed in the book. These aspects come in the cause of knowledge accumulation versus distinctive stages of life of a human being. Knowledge acquisition shapes individual behavior of a person. It enables one gather the experience and necessary life qualities that structure their future living. According to John, the various stages of human development must be met with the necessary knowledge and life stage experiences for one to become an overall complete person.
The development of Rant’s life can be categorically aligned with the various stages of psychological development. At a young age, Rant develops the sense of smell and gradually experiences the effects of the suburb environment like other people. Casey, developed cognitive capabilities at a young age in which he discovered and identified the obsession of the animal and spider bites. At the event when Rant was bitten by a spider, he realizes an erection as happen. This shows how much young Casey had acquires conceptual understanding and emotional development. The event of leaving for the city justifies how Rant had undergone physical development. The participation of the party crashing required much cognitive knowledge and understanding of various concepts. Buster Casey showed great understanding of the game to an extent of organizing the zombie like initiative. Buster Casey was able to interact well with the Nighttimer social class in the city. His close association with Echo Lawrence that led to falling in love with her shows how rant had developed social and emotional skills. Rant further achieved to initiate the nationwide rabies epidemic movement. This tells the life achievement stage as explained in psychological development of a human being. Therefore, before the death of Buster Casey, his life was characterized with all stages of development psychology. Interviewees had a great admiration of the life and achievements and walked all around to talk about him.
Additional outside book research
As discussed earlier, developmental psychology discipline entails an aspects and elements of human development in distinctive stages of life. There are many theories that explain the acquisition of knowledge and human development (Ferder, 1990). These theories were suggested by popular psychologists. They include the theory of constructivism, attachment theory and ecological system theory. Others include the theories of psychosexual development suggested by Sigmund Freud and the stages of moral development which explains the three moral attributes that entails perceptual reasoning. Reasoning is shaped by the actions of rewards or punishment that further shapes the behavior of a human being.
Freud’s five stages of psychosexual are the oral stage, happening at between births to 12 months. A child focuses on oral pleasures such as sucking of their fingers and other oral activities. Furthermore, children become much depended upon others. Anal stage then follows as the second stage of psychosexual development. It happens between 18 months and three years of age. Through the environment characterized by parents and family members, a child learns how to control anal stimulation (Ferder, 1990). As a result of anal fixation, a child can develop an obsession of certain activities and situations. For example children may develop a sense of cleanness or perfection to certain things. If not proper guided, children may end up disorganized, normally described as anal expulsive. The third stage is known as phallic stage coming at ages between three to six years. At the phallic stage, children’s pleasures switch into the genitals. A boy develops unconscious desires of sex for their mother. This leads to tendency that boys become enemies to their fathers who they view as bringing a competition for affection to their mother. They also feel that their father may punish them. Freud explained this feeling as Oedipus complex. On the other hand, girls develop similar feelings towards their father. Latency is the fourth stage. It occurs between six years to puberty age. Sexual urges become increasingly intimate (Ferder, 1990). Children therefore associate themselves with same age peers in which they pay and interact together. The last stage is referred to as the genital stage. This stage proceeds from puberty onwards. Here, children sexual needs lead them to recognize opposite sex peers with the aim of genital pleasure. They develop relationships with adolescents of opposite ages which further go to be life commitments and marriage.
Freud’s stages were based on preconscious, conscious and unconscious levels. He explained that conscious level, people are aware of their mental processes while preconscious entails the information that is not in people’s thoughts at the real time. At unconscious level, People are aware of mental processes of other people and not themselves. Erik Erikson incorporated the social aspects to Freud psychosocial stages of development. He developed eight stages where a crisis of a positive situation goes contrarily to a negative one. Happening at exact the same time frame that Freud suggested, Erick came up with trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame, initiative versus guilty and industry versus inferiority as the fourth stage. The other stages are identity versus identity diffusion, intimacy versus isolation, generality versus self absorption and integrity versus despair. Each of the stages builds a foundation of the successor stages. This means that challenges expected to appear at early stages may reappear and bring problems in the future.
Conclusion
Buster Casey’s life in the book ‘RANT’ well concur with the theories discussed by Freud and Erikson. As discussed earlier, Buster’s living encountered psychosocial and physical development in a particular sequence throughout the entire story. From a young age, adolescent up to the adulthood of Buster Casey, his life was accompanied with various experiences that can be accounted for in Freud and Erikson theories. This therefore means that, all aspects development psychology is essential to the life span of every individual. Upon successful completion of each stage, a person become overall complete human being. Lack of completion of certain stages may result into future problems in later ages of human life.
References
Ferder, F. (1990). Love's journey: The stages of psychosexual development. Elkridge, MD: Chesapeake Audio/Video Communications, Inc.
Santrock, J. (2007). Essentials of Life-span Development (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
