Youth in example sentence
Steve's father is an unemployed sot, his mother has left the home to be with another man, and his older brother utilizes him as a schoolyard dope dealer, plainly a dispiriting background for the youth, but as depicted one feels no sympathy for him, as his deportment appears to stem from stupidity rather than as reaction to socio/economic pressures in this erratically paced work wherein puerile incident assumes precedence above character development.