Anomie In Teenage Wasteland

In “The C Word in the Hallway”, author, Anna Quindlen expresses her pleas to reach out and end the neglect of teen struggles. Bullying, break-ups, isolation, family issues, academics, and more could result as contributing factors to the hardships of teenagers. Unfortunately, “role models” setting the examples, overlook the fatal outcomes of these hardships. The poor example taught is to mask our struggles and toughen through them. This masking method can only be effective for so long before one cracks. In her article regarding the uprising of mental health issues found in teenagers, Anna Quindlen calls to action on parents, educators, and politicians to emphasize the importance of recognizing teenage hardships, so the teenagers can too recognize

The Brothers are a group of mostly black boys (with the exception of one) who so not smoke, drink regularly, and value education as they all attend high school. Though they are merely a peer group and not their own subculture as they value academics and athletics and are not as bothered by the stigma of living in the projects. Describing the differences in the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers, the MacLeod points out that the Hallway Hangers rarely have parental supervision, many have lived in public housing for several years, many have absent fathers, and the educational attainment of their families is very low. The Brothers on the other hand have more parents and siblings who graduated high school and attended at least some college, more have father figures living in the house, and their average time living in Clarendon Heights is less than the Hallway Hangers.

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

Humans in society are like musicians in an orchestra. Solo, their parts sound odd and out of place, lacking the harmonies mindfully composed for the rest of the orchestra. Humans are interdependent, social creatures by nature. We rely on each other to survive. We rely on each other to do jobs that might require a certain skill set or jobs that we might not have time to do ourselves. We even rely on each other to bring a sense of familiarity and security to our communities just by knowing one another. If we all remained anonymous, then we could not rely on each other to satisfy these vital societal needs. Scott Russell Sanders, in his essay “The Common Life”, states that the more people in a community who prefer to live isolated and reclusive lives, the more susceptible the community is to a division that impedes its ability to live together, interact synergistically, and thrive. He correctly believes that this division can lead to a total “breakdown” in society.

Emile Durkheim also mentioned anomie- which is the lack of regulation or breakdown of norms. It is a state of “normlessness”- people do not know where they belong. A disconnect emerges between your desires and what you can have. Masses of people did not feel connected to the whole because of the quick change from traditional to modern societies. According to Durkheim, it was the internalization of social morality. Too many people were not integrated into society, and their capacity of needs were unlimited. Industrialization dissolved restraints on the passions of humans. Traditional societies taught people to control their lives through religion. Modern, industrious, societies separated people through the division of labor. There is no limitation on what we desire or go after. There is social disorganization and too many possibilities. As a result we cannot reach our goals. Durkheim says there has to be a limitation on our wants and desires. In the film we saw people in traditional societies satisfied with what they had because noone around them had more or less. They were on a solidarity

The book “With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets” written by Marni Finkelstein refers to the homeless youth. This book describes the lifestyle of the teenagers with no home and explains with detail about what consist in their everyday lives in the streets of New York City. The purpose of this book is to explain to people who these kids are and to see life in their point of view. It explains the difference between street kids and the kids that live on the street. We need to understand that the kids that live on the streets have their own culture and their own way of surviving. Learning their point of view would be a great eye opening experience for everyone and to also understand their struggle. This book explains a study that was done to 50 street kids and life on the streets.

According to American Foundation For Suicide Prevention, they stated, “On average, there are 121 suicides per day.” Among with this, it is also shown in recent statistics that the suicide rate has been steadily increasing from 10.96 average suicides per every 100,000 people in 2006 to 13.26 average suicides per every 100,000 people in 2015 in America alone. This trend will only continue to increase in number until the terrifying vision first presented by Bradbury will inevitably occur. Though suicide is common with adults, what is even more petrifying is the increase in child-related violence. In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, it states, “ I'm afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always used to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car

From the time they are little, youths are being trained for adulthood whether they realize it or not. They must get used to the ways of the world if they are to survive in it. Perhaps the most tragic is the attempt to escape. Eady describes the children as fighting what is expected of them by “reach[ing] in self-defense” for a way to express themselves(27). They try to hide behind the wigs, lipstick, and sequins of a life they can only dream of.

“In our media-intensive culture it is not difficult to find differing opinions… The difficulty lies in deciding which opinion to agree with and which ‘experts’ seem the most credible” (Espejo 11). The perceptions of one age group in society of another age group are built upon assumptions that are made through what is visible. However, rarely is anyone willing to understand the reason behind someone’s actions. Sibling rivalry, the death of a loved one, moving to a new school, competition among peers, and the reputation adolescents have today often end up giving a misperception of society to teens and of teens to society, thus damaging the relationships between society, as illustrated by J.D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye.

Youth that reside in communities that are deprived socially and economically, have ongoing violence, drugs,

Teens today do not realize what separation of society into “groups” can really mean.The things that seem inconceivable now can become plausible by the classification of “others.” Elie Wiesel’s Night shows that something as small as being classified as Jewish (through a star) can lead to a discrimination and a genocide. What was normal at that time (the star) quickly became terrible. What will the norms today be considered tomorrow? This is the question that teens today fail to realize. Teens today usually have small circles that they are obligated to. Night shows teens that the universe of obligation is something that needs to be readily expanded. If teens refuse to expand their circle, that will lead to a classification of groups.

Author Randal Contreras opens The Stickup Kids chapter eight, “Drug Robbery Torture” by discussing how the act of torture is viewed in both a sociologists and the common citizen. He explains how the acts are hard to understand for those who are not involved. The “Stickup Kids” are looked down upon, seen as morally corrupt, and labeled as monsters. He then goes into detail explaining how people such as the “Stickup Kids” are looked down upon because they are poor and stigmatized so the acts they commit are unforgiveable whereas the government has sanctioned tortures and their acts are forgivable because their victims are the “enemy”- which is also the reason the government sanctioned tortures are allowed to not feel shame, where as it is repugnant that the “Stickup Kids” do not. This leads to Contreras discussion on how men like Gus and Neno and the rest of the stick up kids do not have social causes to justify their actions so they use capitalistic reasoning. They are doing what they have to survive because the robberies they commit are their way of life. They are just shamed for it because of their socioeconomic status; this is white collar crime is overlooked but the stickup kids’ actions are so heavily penalized.

In his research Jay Macleod, compares two groups of teenage boys, the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers. Both groups of teenagers live in a low income neighborhood in Clarendon Heights, but they are complete opposites of each other. The Hallway Hangers, composed of eight teenagers spend most of their time in the late afternoon or early evening hanging out in doorway number 13 until very late at night. The Brothers are a group of seven teenagers that have no aspirations to just hang out and cause problems, the Brothers enjoy active pastimes such as playing basketball. The Hallway Hangers all smoke, drink, and use drugs. Stereotyped as “hoodlums,” “punks,” or “burnouts” by outsiders, the Hallway Hangers are actually a varied group, and much

It is sad to see how these teenagers think of themselves as being cool because of the activities they choose to do, when they each see how it is making them live a shorter life and none of them are doing a thing about it. Life is worth more than feeling cool. Proverbs says, “Since they hated knowledge…the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them” (Proverbs 1:29a, 32). The teenagers in “We Real Cool” have an image of their selves as being cool on the outside because of the badly behaved things they are taking part in and want others to think them as being cool. These teenagers want to think that they are cool for doing the things they do, but they know that the destructive life they live will soon be a factor to their deaths. Brooks demonstrates in “We Real Cool” that even though people acknowledge their own behavior and think of themselves as being cool, their destructive ways will be a part of their short lives and none of their coolness will ever matter again.

The sociological imagination, a concept used by C. Wright Mills, is essentially the ability to perceive a situation or act in a much larger social context as well as examining the situation or act from many perspectives. In particular, it plays a paramount role in Donna Gaines ' Teenage Wasteland. It is a tragic story of 4 teens who together, committed suicide. The teens were deemed as “dropouts, druggies” [Teenage Wasteland 8.2] by newspapers and were still treated with disdain even after their deaths. However, using the sociological imagination, Gaines argues that this is not simply a suicide committed by “troubled teens” but other underlying themes are present.