Childhood And Adolescence In Teenage Wasteland, By Rita Dove

Adolescence can define kids and who they become as adults. This essential era of their lifetime and the ups and downs of adolescence and learning moments is shown in the 1970s and 1980s throughout “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler, “Baba O’Riley” by The Who, and “Adolescence” by Rita Dove. In “Teenage Wasteland,” Tyler did a good job of describing the struggles and lifestyle of a teenager. Tyler did this well because she showed the common issues with teens and explained how the mom attempted to correct her kid’s path in life. For example, the teenage character, Donny, was expelled from a private school (Tyler 870), and this caused problems as when a kid is expelled, the parents would need to find a new school, discipline the kid, and make sure something of this sort does not happen again. Another example of the struggle is the smoking and drinking that Donny was found doing during the story (Tyler 866),

This highlights the low parts and immature times of being an adolescent. Many teenagers experience and do things they will in the future regret, but as these are bad things they also provide learning moments. The song, The Who described that it is a teenage wasteland which in more detail is where a bunch of teenagers were on acid and 20 kids got brain damage as a result, and the teenage wasteland is to express how they were all getting wasted (The Who 1). The whole incident was super serious and dangerous and is getting exposed as everyone is hearing the song and finding out about what happened (The Who 1). This is a scary moment for the adolescence of our country because it shows the dangers of immaturity and young kids. This song blew up in popularity and everyone was talking about it. In “Adolescence” goes into further detail on the choices of young kids and how important of a period it can be for someone’s