Thread:LucidPigeons/@comment-27818776-20150924200632/@comment-27818776-20150930114319

Though, one thing I can say on the novel version on Aunt Ruth Chandler was that she was motivated into torturing Meg, because she was envious of the girl's beauty. The movie doesn't really delve into the reasons as to why she abused Meg, but that is the reason as to why she hated Meg in the novel. One of the main ideas of the novel is the idea of adult authority and the Lucifer Effect (which means that someone is free to act the way they want if you were to give them the permission). The children were free to abuse Meg, because they had gotten permission from an adult. If she was okay with torturing Meg, then logically, she wouldn't care if they tortured her as well. In the film adaptation, it was shown that Ruth only thought of her children as tools, and that she was manipulating them into torturing Meg (sorry for the long explanation if you had already seen the film).

There was also the idea that, if you were a child, an adult wouldn't believe your claims, or that they would be ineffective about it. Meg tries to tell a police officer about Ruth's abuse, but as you would've guessed, he doesn't believe her. David tries to tell his parents about the abuse, but they proved to be useless (i. e. the Adults are Useless trope is in play). Also, the reason as to why David didn't do anything to help Meg until it was too late was because the Chandlers had been his long-time friends. Aunt Ruth was considered "the cool mom," because she would hand out beer and cigarettes to the children; he was deluded into believing that what they were doing to Meg was justified to a sense. That, and he was afraid of the retribution that he would get from the Chandlers if he were to tell someone about Meg's condition. So, while David was a bad protagonist, you could at least understand why he didn't act at first until the climax of the story.