In the Belly of the Beast Essay
In the Belly of the Beast, by Jack Henry Abbott is an autobiography that expresses the life of a criminal and his experiences in and out of prison. Jack Henry Abbott was born on January 21, 1944, on a military base in Oscoda, Michigan. Growing up in foster care, being owned by the state and considered in the lower class Abbot didn't have much of a chance for a normal life. Since a very young age Abbott was always in trouble with the law. As a teenager he was living in the state juvenile detention center. Jack would always be picked on and disciplined because he had such a tough exterior. Abbott was first sent to an all boys’ school because of failure to obey the rules of the foster care system. The first prison sentence was because he had insufficient funds in his bank account, which resulted in a bad check. This then triggered a numerous amounts of crimes which kept him locked up for life.
Abbott dropped out of school at the age of nine and kept on going downhill in life. In 1970 when he was twenty-six, he escaped from jail and was a free man for about 6 weeks. He was in jail for about forty-seven years of his life. While on the outside he talks about how he would wake up in the middle of the night having bad dreams of prison. In the beginning of the book he talks about how the only “real” crime he committed was a bank robbery that took place while he was already a fugitive (Abbott, 5). Jack talks about how he was strip-searched more than once a week which is degrading to any human. He talks about how he had been sexually assaulted and inspected. He surprisingly looks for the lords help when he gets searched hoping he will basically not get molested.
Jack never had the tender love and care most people get from a mother and a father which was the start of a crooked life. Society set for a man in his position to fail because he was given parents who didn’t love him and he was troubled but never given help early enough to...