This master narrative of their lives excuses inaction; it provides a rationale for remaining helpless.
And we might have remained helpless, scarred by those long minutes of violence, if not for Matt's mom.
As an example, Page linked to the Wikipedia page on "Treatment of slaves in the United States," claiming the 1850 slaveholders' manual instructed masters to "Deprive access to education and recreation, to ensure that slaves remain uneducated, helpless and dependent".
While she and her husband moved here 11 years ago, her in-laws, old and helpless, remain in Afghanistan.
Díaz's great achievement is to remain true to the helpless solipsism that possesses all of us most of the time, while allowing the reader to see those other stories on the periphery of Yunior's purview.
Kids who receive too much academic support sometimes learn to feel helpless, and remain overly reliant on adult support well into high school and often beyond.
Once, when the bird won't stop bating, White flies into a rage and, in violation of the first commandment of hawking, deliberately thwarts its effort to climb back up on his fist, forcing it to remain dangling upside down in helpless terror.
We think our babies will remain just so -- immobile, helpless, warm and slippery, smiling on cue, themselves so much like dolls we dress them and re-dress them in tiny versions of the outfits we would wear.
The chicks are altricial and nidicolous; that is, they are born helpless and blind and remain in the nest for an extended period.
