Summary Of An Army Of One Me By Jean Twenge

Jean Twenge, the author of An Army of One: Me, speaks in depth about the younger generation’s, GenMe’s, “cultivated” (Twenge 495) sense of self-esteem in her writing, going to great lengths to-describe how this type of self-importance is completely harmful and artificial compared to the older generation’s, the Baby Boomer’s, healthy sense of acquired self based on ‘superior,’ this belief being implied in her tone, traits of “self-responsibility [and] hard work.” (Twenge 492) If Twenge were to review Son, Alan Solomon’s essay, she,-from what I could infer, would most likely compare this modern sense of self to the-horizontal conditions spoken about

Right at the beginning of her essay, she wrote that “back then [during the time of the older generations], respect for others was-more important than respect for yourself.” (Twenge 487) With that single line, the author establishes-a certain role and tone in respect to both generations; GenMe being casted as the ‘villain,’ those who are going about it in the wrong manner, while the Baby Boomers is portray through her writing as the-‘hero.’ Additionally, this sets up a platform for her to continuously demolish the worth of the younger generation’s learnt love of self, especially since it differs from the Baby Boomers and their “normative” (Solomon 384) sense of self. With this foundation, Twenge could argue that since the morals and/or the traits of GenMe, the children you could say, differs-from those “vertical” (Solomon-371) or “normalized” (Solomon 384) individuals in the older-generation, the parents, that the younger generation could be described as an “abnormality” (Solomon 371) or as “horizontal” (Solomon 371) as a result. But I do-not believe Solomon would agree with this