Teenage Wasteland Analysis

Heather isn’t popular, but she is determined to make it into the crowd. Heather constantly asks Melinda for help on many things but never defends Melinda from a clique she wants to join called "The Marthas". Heather soon dumps Melinda, and decides to hang out with her group instead. Throughout the year, Melinda skips some of her classes and ends up with horrid grades. All of her teachers hate her, except for her art teacher Mr. Freeman.

Annotated Bibliography Curnutt, Kirk. “Teenage Wasteland: Coming-of-Age Novels in the 1980s and 1990s.” Critique. 43.1 (Fall 2001): 93-111. Academic Search Complete.

Literary Analysis The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson is the tale of Hayley Kincain, a seventeen year old girl, and her incredibly unstable life with Andy, her father. Andy is a war veteran who suffers from Post-traumatic stress disorder, and is constantly assaulted by horrific memories of the past. Hayley’s mother perished in a car accident soon after Hayley was born, while Andy was still deployed in Iraq. Hayley was raised by her grandmother Barbara until Hayley was seven, at which point Barbara died and Andy returned home to care for Hayley.

While unparenting assumably means neglect, it actually is a parenting style, giving children the right to have numerous freedoms. Unparenting is a form of parenting involving partial parental detachment from the offspring (YourDictionary.com). This often includes a lack of rules or parental guidance. Unparenting has no strict rules or guidelines, leading to countless different forms of the word. However, they are all united by one common category: Independence.

People normally don’t think of teenagers as kids who always agree with their parents. Teenagers can have a difficulty relating to their parents and are often in conflict with them. Many teens feel embarrassed by their parents or have a hard time understanding what it is like to be an adult. In the stories “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan and “The Rights to the Streets of Memphis” by Richard Wright, the authors both say that mothers care for their teenagers deeply and want to teach them important life lessons, although “Fish Cheeks” displays this relationship with a calm mother who teaches her child Amy through emotional lessons and “The Rights to the Streets of Memphis” describes a stern and tough mother who teaches her child Richard through physical and violent lessons.

Tyler writes: “It shamed her now to sit before this principle as a parent, a delinquent parent, a parent who strum Mr. Lanham, no doubt as unseeing or uncaring” (Tyler). This quote shows how Donny’s mother cares about how she looks while she is in the principal 's office, rather than caring about Donny. Tyler writes: “She sat next to him as he worked, trying to be encouraging, sagging inwardly as she saw the poor quality of everything he did” (Tyler). Donny’s mother then tries to help her son in what she thought to be helpful, but she is upset because of the quality of his work, showing how she would sit and watch while he failed, rather than sit and help him. “Imagine, Daisy thought, how they must look to Mr. Lanham” (Tyler).

In addition, what the author had claimed about school faculty not helping a “problem child” such as Jessica because they did not have time to is absurd; no wonder why the youth turn to gang life because they see that there is no one else to guide

In addition, Sally acts incredibly different in school than at home. During school, she yearns to be the most popular student, so

Nancy Dessommes, a literary critic, writes that “Connie thinks of little beyond maintaining her own good looks, impressing boys, and living for the excitement of the moment” (435). Since she spends the day fantasying about boys, Connie does have a diminishing relationship with her family, especially her mother and sister. She is constantly going against her mother to prove that she is not following social views on teenage sexuality. She acts out because “she prefers peer approval to parental and depends on it for her identity” (Dessommes 435). Her ego depends on approval from her friends and potential romantic partners to further her breaking out of her innocent image.

As some people around him tried to help him, he wanted none of it. Shortly his parents made the decision to send him to a private school. Teenage Wasteland by Anne Tyler showed that by getting the help you need, you need to want it for yourself. The first sign of Donny not wanting help was when Mrs. Coble was talking with the principle and she says “It isnt that were not

Mary desperately has goals of becoming a successful artist in life. However, she never attains a paycheck for her art. Mary is forced to work as a teacher to buy food and pay bills. Although this is a profession Mary studied for, she is not happy about her career. Towards the end of the school year in Welch, students’ progress evaluations were due and without them, the remedial reading program was going to lose its funding.

Sarah Vowell and Annie Dillard both wrote essays about their youth with nostalgia, highlighting the significance of childhood as an innocent and mischievous time in their lives. In Sarah Vowell’s essay “Shooting Dad,” Vowell realizes that despite their hostility at home and conflicting ideologies concerning guns and politics, she finds that her obsessions, projects, and mannerisms are reflective of her father ’s. On the other hand in Annie Dillard’s essay “An American Childhood” Dillard runs away from a man after throwing a snowball at his car, after getting caught she realizes that what matters most in life is to try her best at every challenge she faces no matter the end result. Sarah Vowell’s essay is more effective than Annie Dillard’s because she includes allusions and tones, which juxtaposes warfare and religion with the innocent

Best of the Worst Parenting is never perfect. Every parents questions whether they are raising their child correctly, and no parent ever feels like they are doing the right thing. With no clear distinction between good and bad parenting, it is usually left to personal preferences and judgements to decide which parents have adequately raised their children and which have failed. When a parent so call “fails,” often it is the children with their strong will and determination to survive that collectively raise themselves. In Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, Leonie, one of the narrators and the mother of another narrator, Jojo, is not the most caring, hands-on mother, but is loving of her children nevertheless.

When Melinda loses her only friend, her depression grows and she begins skipping class. Mr. Freeman and David Petrakis are the only people who notice Melinda’s

Carolyn Kizner’s pantoum “Parent Pantoum” (1996) laminates that the speaker is conflicted about her daughter’s adolescent behavior and attitude. Kizner explores the speakers discontent between herself and her children using metaphor, juxtaposition, and parallel structure. Through her contemporary pantoum, Kizners speaker marvels at her “enormous children” (1) in order to try to understand how the girls can “moan about their age” (6) but still appear in “fragile heals and long black dresses” (7). Kizners pantoum addresses the speakers view on how kids act when they are in their adolescent years with a bewildered tone, however; as the poem progresses, the speaker develops her own ideas about why teens behave the way they do in a hopeful and proud tone.