In this essay I shall analyse how Paddy´s relationship with his brother Sinbad develops in relation to the many outside influences and occurences which surround their lives. In particular Paddy´s relationship with his friends and his parents relationships with each other.To begin with Paddy sees his brother more as a tool to impress his friends with and seemingly has no proper relationship with him at all. The way in which he impresses his friends is by various intriguing cruel experiments and methods of torture. I think that also, this is subconsciously a way of giving himself a feeling of superiority. Although it is not over his friends he feels that if he is superior to his brother then at least he has some sort of status within the group. The most interesting and possible most cruel method of inflicting pain on his unfortunate brother is when he pours lighter fluid into Sinbad´s mouth and sets it ablaze, this is not just an example of random opportunist violence, but one of pre-meditated hatred towards his brother. Also when Paddy says 'I gave him a dead leg´ the impression is given again that it is not opportunistic but that Paddy has purposfully gone out of his in order to bring harm to Sinbad because of something Sinbad had done earlier. Paddy also trys to hurt Sinbad emotionally by getting him into trouble with his parents; 'I loved getting him into trouble´.However once his parents have an argument, although Paddy has not yet realised it yet, Sinbad and Paddy have something in common in the fact that they are both united by their dislike of their parents fighting and each make an effort to try to stop it. We can observe this when after the fight Da asks Sinbad how school was. Sinbad laughed and forced himself to laugh more. 'I knew why´ says Paddy. Sinbad has done this to try to take the attention away from the fight and try to create a more pleasant atmosphere. However Da is cleverer than this and also knows why. He tries to catch Sinbad out because he knows this is not the truth. Sinbad looks to Paddy for help and he saves him; 'I´d won, I´d saved Sinbad´. We can see that there is a sense of pride and happiness that he has helped his brother. After being belted by their Da they are also united in that the same fate has befallen them and they compare their marks on the backs of their legs.When they play football, although Paddy aknowledges to himself that his brother is brilliant he is very jealous and pretends to impress his mates by giving the team with Sinbad a two nil lead. Before when Paddy was cruel to Sinbad to impress his mates it had also been to impress...
