The Tattoo By Chris Mckinney Essay - 1704 Words

‘The tattoo’ is a novel which was written by Chris McKinney about a young adult named Ken ‘Kenji’ Hideyoshi who was sent to the Halawa Correctional Institute. Inside he tells his personal struggle of living life as a Japanese male brought up in Hawai’i, being exposed to poverty, colonialism, violence, urban gangs, and drugs. In this essay, I will argue that one can learn criminal and violent behaviour by those who they hold close interpersonal relationships with, for example, family and friends. In saying that, I will be using the social learning theory looking in particular at Edwin Sutherland and his notion of differential association and Akers concept of differential reinforcement to explore the relationship between Ken Hideyoshi and Koa Puana. In The Tattoo, we were introduced to Koa Kauhi Puana who originates from Kahaluu on the Windward side of the island and also a boy who Ken had met in his English class at King Intermediate School. Koa comes from a line of royalty, where his dad was the king of Puana Castles which meant that in the future he had the potential to follow his father’s footsteps, but due to the fact that Koa had fallen in to the trap of all of the societal influences around him, he began to change and lost that opportunity. In saying that, although Ken and Koa did not start off on the best of terms, they began to form a close bond to the point where they considered one another best friends and even brothers. Furthermore, this was just the beginning,Show MoreRelatedLike Father, Like Son : An Analysis On The Development And Complexities Of Kin Relations Essay1953 Words   |  8 PagesLike Father, Like Son: An Analysis on the Development and Complexities of Kin Relations A sociological thought piece, Chris McKinney’s The Tattoo is bursting with toxic relationships. Amongst these, McKinney uses the strained kinship between Ken Hideyoshi and his father to partially explain how people fall into cycles of violent behaviour. To understand the richness of the text, violence will be characterised as the intentional or unintentional application of force, and/or power resulting in psychological