Essay about Analysis of Teenage Wasteland

Teenagers are seen as the most apathetic age group time and time again; with growing problems in today’s world concerning politics, the economy, and social issues, it’s no wonder the youth of today are they way they are. There is little to no hope for them to completely change everything for the better without help from the older generations. The youth should be able to live freely, as they choose without the restriction of older generation’s strict standards like the absolute necessity of a good reputation. Some choose to live their lives to the fullest, like John Grady from All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy. He and Alejandra risk overwhelming prejudice to be together. The passionate environment of the lake scene is reflected using

In the short story, “Teenage Wasteland”, there is a troubled boy named Donny. Donny has trouble with his attitude and his grades, so his family decides to get him help. They are suggested to go to “a tutor with considerable psychological training”(Tyler 3) in order to help Donny. As time goes on, his grades start to get worse; even though he seems to be happier and have a better attitude at times. His mother does not have a lot of trust, but is told to leave it to the tutor, Calvin. After Donny gets expelled and takes his final exams, Donny disappears. He does not come back by the end of the story. Many may believe that Donny’s mother, Daisy, is the most to blame for the outcome of Anne Tyler’s story “Teenage Wasteland,”

Anne Tyler’s “Teenage Wasteland” is a story about a modern day family of four and the relationship issues they experienced with each other. The story is presented in third person limited; however, the reader is shown much about how the mother of the family feels and the troubles she experiences in her relationships with her husband and children, primarily her son Donny. Daisy is portrayed as a mother who worries that she had failed Donny because of his continual disobedience toward the authority figures in his life. Donny is a teen who constantly misbehaves in school and in the story is described as “noisy, lazy, and disruptive; always fooling around with his friends, and would not respond in class.” (188). These behaviors lead Donny to

This novel “is a book that truly speaks to adolescents in contemporary language and with teenage characters about adolescent sexuality” (Kaplan 27). Katherine is learning about her sexuality in the novel.

“Suffering when you're young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encouraged them, she told us.”(28) In the memoir, The Glass Castle (2005) , Jeannette Walls writes of her journey to becoming a renowned journalist in New York City, recounting the hardships she faced, such as extreme poverty and negligent parenting. Rose Mary, Jeannette’s mother and an aspiring artist, prides herself in her parenting methods, or lack thereof. Despite other mothers, who coddle their children, and want to protect them at all costs, Rose Mary has a different approach to parenthood. From her perspective, children should have the unrestricted ability

“Teenage Wasteland" is told from Daisy's perspective. By doing this, Anne Taylor only gives us Daisy’s point of view of Donny. This may paint a completely different picture of what others think of him. From the very beginning of the story you get a sense of how Donny’s character will continue to change. “He used to have very blonde hair, almost white, cut shorter than other children so that on his crown a little cowlick always stood up to catch the light.” Donny was depicted to be innocent. Tyler uses the words “light”and “white” and this makes me think of only pure and good things. Soon after we see how Tyler changes her tone with Donny. “As he grew older, his hair grew darker, and he wore it longer-past his collar even.” To me this changes our view on Donny without even

Letting go of the child whom one nourished from birth is challenging. When the mother senses her child drifting away and sees her child at the gateway to independence, who once ran to meet her when the she picked up from school, the mother is heartbroken and feels depressed. However, the mother’s love exceeds the bounds of anguish and disappointment. The mother considers what’s best for the child and “says nothing” when the child is making his or her own choices (54). Johnnie Dent Jr. once said, “As parents we have a tendency to be overprotective; it's okay to try and show them all positives, but we cannot forget that the real world has teeth” (Dent Jr.). This convoluted relationship and mother’s train of thoughts are carefully described through appropriate allusion, syntax, and symbols in the poem. As the poem suggests, silently watching the child make life choices and wishing the best for the child could be an effective parenting method for growth in the

Although Donny academic tutor has tried to help his troubling problem, he never succeeds. “He admitted he’d made no headway with Donny and said it was because Donny was emotionally disturbed.”(Tyler 266) Donny has fixed his bad deeds at school, but he turned into a despondent teenager. “He did his assignments, and he earned average grades, but he gathered no friends, joined no clubs. there was something exhausted and defeated about him.”(Tyler 266) Donny has been fighting through his depression, but he eventually escapes it

A mother is a woman that loves her children despite all of their flaws, insecurities, and fears. A mother is a woman who will always worry about her children no matter how old they may grow, from age zero to age fifty-five. A mother is someone that will go hungry so that her children can eat, will walk barefoot so her children will have shoes, and will go poor paying for her children’s needs. These characteristics all describe a typical mother but not all describe Rose Mary Walls, the mother of four children in the memoir The Glass Castle. Instead of acting in a selfless manner rather than selfish, Rose Mary’s attitudes and behaviors are childlike to the point that her children must assume adult responsibilities because she refuses to. Rose

Towards the beginning of the novel, there is a scene where Bobby is caring for Feather, his infant daughter, when his basketball rolls away from him, towards the door. This basketball symbolizes Bobby's old life, and his old responsibilities. Before he had Feather, Bobby would play basketball with his friends, and just have fun. Now, the responsibility of having a child has consumed all of his time, and when the ball rolls away from him, it represents his old habits and actions leaving his life. This supports

In her novel The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls discusses social problems that people deal with daily. One of the most basic issue we deal with every day is the kind of parents we want to be and the things we feel are the most important to teach our children. The lessons learned in childhood is eventually what shapes a person’s moral and values as they mature into an adult. Walls’ memoir enables us to see how Rex and Rosemary Walls choose to teach their children to see the positive side of their problems. The Walls teach their children that no matte the circumstances tosses at them, they can shoulder the burden. Rex and Rosemary Wells may not be considered good parent, and probably not even mediocre parents today, but their children turned into well-educated adults.

Most people know the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the personification of teen rebellion and independence. It illustrates the free-spirit disobedience that lies in the hearts of teenagers. In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” and Anne Tyler’s “Teenage Wasteland,” the reader is given a glimpse of the turbulent times encompassed during teenage years, including the questioning of authority. Through the authors’ style of writing, the theme of both stories are almost identical; the reader can conclude that both authors have diverse tactics in the way they tell the stories. Both characters in each story go through teen rebellion but have different perspectives on how to approach these issues.

In this novel Taylor is a dynamic character, we see her transform from a young girl who didn’t want to get married or have kids to an independent single mother. In the beginning we get to know her as a self-owned, determined and a stubborn girl who is focused, ambitious and thinks outside the box; because she knows firsthand what is like to see her mother struggle as a single parent. She learned to value every day because pregnancy was like a disease. An example of her considerate outlook is “believe me in those days the girls were dropping by the wayside like seeds off a poppy seed bun and you learned to look at every day as a prize” (3). This small but

Psychologists usually agree that the teenage years are among the most difficult periods in one’s life. Most teens are trying to figure out who they are, what they believe, and how they fit into the world around them. Beginning in the late 1970’s, a whole genre of fiction, referred to as coming-of-age literature, emerged and serves, at least for many teens, as believable presentations of young people learning to navigate the difficulties of their lives, often fraught with feelings of rejection, seemingly unresolvable personal turmoil, social problems, school and family issues, etc. Indeed one value of reading is to see and better understand some aspect of ourselves through studying others. The reading of SPEAK, a somewhat controversial book

Kennedy, X.J. and Dana Gioia. Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. New York: Pearson Longman, 2010.