#byerposting

[henrysglock]

Dustin's relationship with his father in The Dustin Experiment is, in my opinion, very much like Jon and Will's with Lonnie, and I'd like to use some excerpts to talk about it.

I saw this talked about by threemanoperation, so I can't claim that this evidence is an original finding, but I'd like to provide my own take on interpretation of it, because I think there are more excerpts that, when put in context, change the message.

(This is, of course, ignoring everything else about the book and taking it as canon for the sake of argument.)

1.

"When I was eight, my parents came home to find me with our radio broken up into parts and spread all over the living room. My dad was pissed, because it was brand new, and I'm sure it wasn't cheap, but I promised I'd put it back together. Took me three days, but I managed to get it working again in time for his Sunday night football." While speaking, I've already removed the broken cap and cleaned out everything the best I can, though I could do it better if I had more materials at my disposal. "Damn, Henderson," Eddie says. "My dad would have beat my ass." "Oh, he wanted to," I say. "But my mom? She took one look, and she signed me up for science camp." She also divorced my dad a few months later, and shortly after that, moved us back to Hawkins where they had both grown up. (pages 35-36)

2.

"The only life lessons I learned from my dad were how not to act" "I'll drink to that," Eddie says, taking a swig from his can of Coke. Then, "You don't mention your dad that much." I shrug one shoulder. My dad's not something I talk about much or even dwell on. "He lives in Illinois now," I say. "We don't really keep in touch." "Ah, a fellow member of the deadbeat dad club?" Eddie asks with a sympathetic wince. "I mean, kind of? He was more just...an asshole?" I say. "He cheated on my mom when I was a kid, they divorced, she moved us back to Hawkins where they'd both grown up, and that's kind of it." I was too much of a mama's boy at that age to forgive my dad, and he didn't care enough to work past that, and now our relationship is nonexistent. Eddie lets out a low whistle that seems to say sheesh. "Sounds like a dick," he says. "Eh," I say. "I'm not really bothered." As far as I'm concerned, my dad has nothing to do with me. If anything, the way he treated my mom makes me more determined to treat my mom better, and Suzie too. I don't want to be anything like him. Everything that makes me me, I owe to my mom, and my friends, and myself. Walter Henderson gets no claim in how awesome I am, thank you very much. (pages 144-145)

threemanoperation used excerpt #2 to draw a connect with this quote:

To call Lonnie the same kind of asshole as Walter in conjunction with an excerpt from the Hopper novel about compartmentalized memories of trauma—seemingly to paint a picture of Lonnie being a source of buried trauma for Will in a similar way to El's purported dissociative amnesia surrounding the 1979 massacre.

With the added context, I have to wholeheartedly disagree.

Walter was an asshole, but D'Amato makes a point to specify that Walter did not beat Dustin the way Alan beat Eddie, and that Claudia divorced Walter a few months after he even came close to wanting to hit his son. Walter is now entirely absent from Dustin's life, and Dustin doesn't consider him a major influence, let alone a negative influence. In fact, he re-frames Walter as being a source of motivation to be a better person.

We see this same type of effect coming through with Lonnie and Jon:

Lonnie, Jon, Dustin, and Walter are almost beat-for-beat the same. Neither Jon nor Dustin want to become their absentee asshole dads who are worse to their wives than they are to their children—specifically because their wives left them before things could get any worse than they were.

Hell, Lonnie and Joyce separated around the same time Claudia and Walter did in The Dustin experiment:

Claudia left Walter when Dustin was eight. Will, pictured above, is no older than twelve. "Should I Stay or Should I Go" came out in 1982, so realistically, he's no younger than eleven. Given that Joyce is sick of Lonnie's excuses, it's fair to say he's been out of the picture for a decent amount of time, meaning there's only about a two year difference between the two story lines.

Not to mention Lonnie and Walter are also, supposedly, both sports guys. Walter was concerned about his Sunday night football, and Lonnie is a baseball guy:

If we're using the books as source material, then we have to acknowledge the full context.

Walter was not physically abusive, he was just an asshole, mainly to Claudia, and he didn't care enough to be present for his son. I feel the Byers family is much the same—Lonnie was an asshole, mainly to Joyce, and he didn't care enough to show up for his kids in any way. Dustin doesn't have any repressed memories of his father, so it's really hard to use his relationship with Walter to craft a case of Will having repressed memories of Lonnie, let alone Lonnie having actively beaten his sons.

(Again, ignoring the out-of-character portions of the novel and the fact that the novels are loosely canon at best.)