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Caro never talked about Luke. He was so – complicated, so hard to explain, and Caro knew somehow that if she even started explaining,
what she said would bring a stern look into Liz’s eyes, a reproving edge to her voice 22.
Luke is such a mysterious person. His unpredictable thought and manners seem to keep lots of secrets hideously, like a psycho who densely keeps
his murdering plan. Unfortunately, the boy’s complicated personality precisely takes him to further matter, which in some respects builds many problems. Luke’s
mum does not even seem to recognize him due to it. She saw his small white face again, turned up to her, white and pinched with the terrible secret he’d been
carrying round inside him 162. By paying attention to other characters’ perception above, thus, it can
be stated that Luke has such complicated characteristic. It is deeply clarified through the way people see him as being unpredictable and mysterious as well.
B. The Influence of Social Pressures among Adolescents towards Luke’s Psychological Life
According to Festinger, Schacter and Back, much of the pressure to conformity comes from the smaller groups within a society to which individuals
belong 4. Being considered as the important aspects of adolescents’ social ecology, family, peers and school are thus being the three main sources of social
pressure commonly occur during adolescence period Kimmel 228.
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Family pressure is one of the pressures which seem to be the most substantial factor in affecting Luke’s psychological life. Being neglected, blamed,
not to mention feeling of distrust are the specific forms of pressures used to derive from parents, and unconsciously build the loss of self-esteem, a negative identity,
and an alienation from the self of the adolescent Conger 556. Dan wouldn’t talk about Luke anymore; he fobbed off, all the time. And he wouldn’t talk to Luke,
not one word, not since those last exams. “He’s on his own now, “Dan had said 45-46.
Yes, Luke would probably fail, and he’d go on the dole, end up on the scrapheap, because that was the kind of thing Luke did. That was Luke
and he had to accept it. He hated what the boy had brought upon them; not just the disappointment and bafflement, or the anger that rose at
the sight of the kid throwing away his chances, chucking every advantage they’d struggled to give him straight back in their faces –
but the shame 114.
She thought of drugs; drugs would have been an obvious answer to the puzzle of why he failed at school. She’d often studied Luke’s bare
arms, searching for needle marks; peered at his eyes, uselessly, because she was never able to remember if drugs made the pupils go
big, or small… 141-142
The way his dad ignores and refuses to speak to him, which Conger used to call “love-withdrawal techniques”, has eventually put such negative
impact on Luke’s psychological development, despite his difficulty in forming satisfying peer relations though Conger 528.
As peers perform many of the same functions in adolescence as in childhood, two of which are to share similar problems and feelings, and to control
