Andrew Fry
Period 4 ELA
Mrs. Weinrich
Argumentative Essay
Adolescence: The Battlefield Many people will argue about adolescence being easy or hard. However, many people, including the authors Gary Soto, who wrote “Saturday at the Canal,” Adam Bagdasarian, who writes “Going Steady” and “Popularity,” and Audre Lorde, who wrote “Hanging Fire,” believe that Adolescence is a difficult time. These authors clearly illustrate that even though adolescence can come easy for some, for many teenagers it is full of mental, physical, and social challenges. First of all, adolescence is a burdensome time because teens have to deal with countless mental challenges. In Adam Bagdasarian’s short story, “Going Steady,” he explains adolescents' mental challenges.
…show more content…
Adam Bagdasarian perfectly captures this idea in his short story titled, “Popularity.” The narrator of this short story feels the need to become popular and leave his position at the bottom of the social class. During his attempts to climb up the social ladder, the narrator realizes that he only has one problem; Mitch. Mitch was the key to the narrator’s social status. The narrator explains, “As it was, the two of us were on a collision course that only one of us would survive.”(Bagdasarian, 30). This quote illuminates that no matter the outcome, one of the boys would have a considerably large amount of status, while the other was left to rot away into nothingness. After the narrator won their collision course, he realized that he, “was standing on sand and was only a yellow shirt and pair of pants away from the oak trees where the two Allans were still looking for four-leaf clovers.”(Bagdasarian, 35). This realization shows that the narrator will always have to be competing to maintain his position on the social ladder. The narrator will always be stuck in the arena, fighting his way to either his demise or his