Isolation Despondency

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A character is having fun with his friends, when he accidentally sets off a chain of events that causes his parents to become angry with what just happened. As a result, the character is then told that he cannot play with his friends anymore because of that.

Expect the isolated character to experience great stress and despondency from not being able to be with his friends. Pretty soon, there will also be a moment of great peril in which one of his friends is in great trouble so he goes out to save his friend in trouble. Afterwards, his parents will then realize that they were wrong to isolate their child from his friends and let him be with his friends again.

Contrast: Feud Episode


Examples of Isolation Despondency include:


Anime and Manga

  • Episode 11 of the Little Lulu anime dealt with Wilbur getting isolated from his friends by his parents, involving a frog that Alvin gave to the butler as a gift. The frog was what pushed Wilbur's parents (specifically his mother) over the edge into isolating him from Lulu and the others. In the end, Wilbur's parents realize that they were wrong in isolating Wilbur so they let him play with Lulu and the others again.

Literature

  • In Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, Peter was forbidden to contact Josie Cormier after they had been found playing with guns.

Western Animation

  • The Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius episode "The Feud" had Jimmy and Carl getting forbade to play with each other again by their fathers, due to an incident involving weed spray that was borrowed and never returned.
  • An episode of The Simpsons had Milhouse forbidden from playing with Bart by his mother. In the end, Marge steps in and points out that keeping Milhouse from his best friend leaves him far worse off than any of Bart's antics.
  • The episode "Abandon Friendship" from Kick Buttowski has Kick and Gunther's parents starting a fight... not exactly because of Kick and Gunther's hanging out, though it initiated it, but through harmless insults (spoken in a joking manner between the adults). Kick's father Harold gets the worst insults thrown at him, but it's his insult toward Gunther's Viking father Magnus that breaks the camel's back. Needless to say the boys are banned from seeing each other.

Real Life

  • Brad Jones once reviewed a Christian propaganda film called Rock: It's Your Decision where the main character's parents essentially ruin his social life by brainwashing him against rock music. The scariest part? The film treats this as a good thing.