"You do not fully know a man until you have walked around in his shoes" Social isolation due to economical disadvantages is the criteria of which Alex Kotlowitz novel There Are No Children Here is based upon. It is a true story in which free lance journalist, Kotlowitz followed the lives of two children, there mother and the rest of their siblings growing up in government project home in Chicago's west side ghetto. The main characters of the story are Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers and their mother La Joe and how they survive the hardship and struggles of an impoverished life and non existence to the rest of the world. The first thing that La Joe mentions to Kotlowitz when she agrees to let him follow and live in their footsteps is the following comment, "But you know, there are no children here," she told him. "They've seen too much to be children.", and it is here that we receive the title of this sentimental and heart felt novel.
             The predicament that the people of this socially separated, violence reigning, horrendous poverty stricken urban community saw on a daily basis gave them no hope for the future. The people learned to become accustomed to and accept that there was little they could do to change the views of the upper class citizens to help them in their dilemma of living out there daily lives. The children are always caught in the grasps of gangs exchanging gun fire and letting out there anger and may not even live to see a new day as a result of it. A way to ignore a problem that exist is to not acknowledge that there is one or try and understand it. Early off in the beginning of the novel Lafeyette and Pharoah along with a couple of the other neighborhood children go to the railroad tracks in the attempt to discover a snake. Upon hearing the people on the train arriving the children flee for cover because of rumors they have heard of the passengers carrying weapons for their safety. The passengers...