This is Our All American Youth - Admission/Application Essay Example

Youth – delightful stage in every human beings life is interpreted in various forms of arts world over. Some call it a delight, for some it comes with lot of expectations and responsibilities etc. But indeed it is one of the most expected and awaited phenomena of one’s life. Transition from childhood to adult stage is a road that has many bends and curves. It is a journey that has a lot of grey and dark areas to travel as well as new heights to achieve. The two literary works which trace this journey that we are going to consider are a play by Kenneth Lonergan called ‘This is our Youth’ and ‘All American Poem’ by Matthew Dickman. The play ‘This is our Youth’ talks about three young people on the edge of adulthood. Dennis Ziegler who is twenty two years old, is bullying, dynamic and kind hearted person. Warren Straub, driven out of his house by his father, is a nineteen year old who is confused and being dominated by Dennis constantly. Jessica Goldman is a cheerful girl in the play who is defensive and confident at the same time about her own decisions regarding her life. The play opens when Warren having driven out by his father for smoking pot comes to Denis’ apartment to stay. Dennis takes Warren in but constantly reminds him that he is a loser and treats him very bad. On seeing that Warren has stolen cash from his father, his first thought is about his own safety and he wants to drive Warren out. Finally Warren persuades Dennis to let him stay and meets his love interest Jessica there. They go out in the night. Second day when Dennis asks about their relationship, Warren admits the physical closeness he shared with Jessica to him. When Jessica visits the apartment later, Dennis is openly questioning about the previous night but leaves soon after. Jessica feels extremely insecure about his behaviour but feels strangely attracted towards Dennis. She confronts Warren. Warren admits he has shared a few details about previous night to Dennis but asserts that he respects the girl a lot. She however insists on leaving immediately and asks for Warren’s most valuable possession as a gift. He reluctantly gives to her but she eventually hands it over back to him and leaves. Warren has a long talk with his father over phone and admits that he stole the money and the hate he feels for his father. Dennis returns and is extremely upset about the death of one of his acquaintances due to drug overdose. He decides to give up the habit of drugs and start a new life again. Warren asserts that Dennis has always been his hero which calms Dennis. The play ends on Warren’s decision to go back home. Matthew Dickman’s poems in ‘All American Poems’ represent the American society and culture in the most authentic way. He gives a young and fresh perspective to whatever that happens around him and in an understandably detached manner. He views the world through the lens of humour, irony, aloofness all at the same time. The most interesting aspect of this poetry is his use of examples, to reinforce his point of view on the reader. The examples he uses shock the reader but at the same time one has to admit the extreme visual it provides to the reader. The subtlety of the poems blends with its frankness wildly. The mixture becomes heady for the reader and gives a dreamy experience to the reader which is grounded in reality. Both works discuss young and youthful age extensively. Through various images Dickman uses, he portrays a sensitive person who absorbs whatever is happening around him. Lonergan deals with two concepts facing the youth in the play. These are coming of age and the fears associated with it and identity crisis and both constitute a part of growing up. Warren who is all of nineteen treats Dennis as his role model. Dennis is hardly old himself and tries to project a confident, suave image all the time. He keeps reminding Warren that it is he who is making their young lives a memory forever. But later his own confidence appears to be shallow and the reader can make out that beneath the confident veneer he is as vulnerable as or probably more than Warren. Warren himself is confused about what he wants to do in life. He wants his life to be uncomplicated and hence he takes the easy way out of stealing from his father and walking out of his home rather than to sit and discuss situation with his father and solve the issues. He doesn’t want to have a role model like his father but he doesn’t who is the alternative either. He doesn’t know whom to turn for support and is very much affected by his sister’s death. Jessica on the contrary sounds confident and sure. She is sure about her future and she also wants to think that going ahead she and Warren are going to be successful and big names to reckon. Her confidence is lacks the depth and is shaky too. The life of these three youths is multipolar and hence they don’t know what their identity is. They are confused about typical adolescent problems such as sex, drugs and money. What is touching in the play is Warren eventually discovering his life and sensitivity through others in the play. He is looking for support and care from the other two and he realises that he is looking at a wrong source. This changes his perspectives. He is explaining about his relationship with his father and how the death of his sister has affected his family and realises that Dennis is not paying any attention to him. Dennis who claims that he wants to give up drugs eventually picks the pot again. Warren realises the shallow confidence, the selfishness and falsity which is the turning point for him. For a young kid, who has stolen from his father and in fact the father has driven him out of the house; returning back to the home is not an easy decision. This again questions the identity he eventually wants himself to be asserted of. But realising the insensitivity of other he feels an understanding of effect of death in the family on his father. Jessica expresses a confused and superficial vanity about Warren sharing details of their relationship with Dennis. More than vanity she doesn’t want to be termed as a liar by her friend who is Dennis’s girlfriend. She is again selfish when she asks for the baseball cap Warren so dearly treasures. It is at that point he sees through her and doesn’t want to go out with her. All throughout the plot these remarkable instances constantly assert the identity crisis the characters are facing. For example; “I am like high on fever. I feel totally high on fever. I’m like- I don’t even know what to do with myself. I wanna like go to cooking school to Florence, or like to go into show business I could so totally be a completely great chef it’s like ridiculous. Or like an actor or a director. I should totally direct movies, man; I would be genius at it. Like if you take the average person with the average sensibility or sense of humour or the way they look at the world and what thoughts they have or what they think, and you compare it to the way I look at shit and the shit I come up with to say, or just slant I put on the shit, there’s just like no comparison at all. I could totally make movies man; I would be like one of the greatest movie makers of all the time. Plus I am like so much better at sports than I anyone I know and except Wally and those big black basket players ….” This long speech given by Dennis, Jessica’s speech about expectation of growing into a remarkable respectable fashion designer and plastic surgeon, Warren’s coming to terms with his understanding of his father all represent an identity crisis issue faced by every teenager. In one of Matthew Dickman’s poem “V”, the protagonist wants to flirt with a girl, but stops himself. He finally admits to himself that maybe he doesn’t want to do it or maybe the girl would want to be treated with respect rather than an object of desire. This speaker gives a very young and fresh appearance of himself. Like Warren he as well is confused if he wants to go ahead with physicality of relations. Warren is not so sure about how he wants to handle Jessica if he meets her. Dennis on the other hand advises Warren to go ahead and have her. Dennis looks at girls with singular perspective which Warren in his heart does not seem to agree with. This is extremely similar to the protagonist of the poem who initially is pushed towards the sexuality aspect but eventually admits the human angle of it. In his long poem, “Public Parks” Matthew Dickman takes a journey of his memories of various parks he visited from his childhood to his adulthood. He writes, “I felt the warm legs of covered-in shadow of romance but had no idea what to do with my hands. I remember how her tights were smooth But scratchy and midnight blue, she had dark curly hair and a name Ramone, or maybe It was Simone and her tongue was perfect like her knees And the weeping willows wept hard for us Because we were rough and rough with each other as much as we were kind There was a bridge over the part of the pond And I crossed it when it rained and Simone Wore a shirt that looked like water When you looked into it and saw a sky that was not a sky and your face which was not really a face. The park was open all night With patrol cars moving in and out, their bodies Like heavy benevolent animals. There we were with our clothes half torn and soaked. This is my favourite memory of rain and parks and ducks and nylon stockings. In this entire poem Matthew Dickman refers to various instances and memories of the various parks he has used and visited for different purposes. Even if almost all the references point to adult life a couple of them like the one mentioned above represents the transition phase of the protagonist. The roughness of the physical experience is not only about the wild desire but also talks of the inexperience of it. A grown up adult would refrain into using a park for such an experience. The very sound of it indicates that either the person has suddenly got an opportunity or clearly did not mean to go all out for it initially. Everything suddenly happened to him. In case of Jessica she initially is on a high defensive about “matchmaking” attempts by her friends. Warren respects her feelings. Slowly things develop between them and they decide to go out of the little apartment to some other place. Had warren not stolen from his father he would have ended up being “rough and rough” with Jessica in the tiny apartment itself. Various experiences that Goldman shares through this poem are unique to each stage of growing up into an adult. A teenager who is transitioning into an adult thinks about sex predominantly and almost constantly. It is being aware of his or her self-sexuality as well as others around him. With parents and guardians constantly warning against rash experiments, the act in itself is breaking the chains of childhood and stepping into being an adult. It gives a new sense of freedom, new form of power present within and unleashing of new desires. This is extremely lovely experience but at the same time very intimidating experience of growing up. The age would not give you the maturity to handle the situation and the body wouldn’t want you to stop. A growing teenager faces a serious dilemma in this. The journey should go from one destination to another such as from physical to emotional; from there to romance and all these culminate into love. “Park” explains this transition as well as various other experiences an adult can have while visiting the parks and finally the experiences become one with those of the readers. The characters in the play take support of various means and ways such as drugs, sex, etc. to find what their inner self and power is. By the time the poem ends, the experiences become one with those of readers and gain an individual identity. The characters in the play at the end of it realise their own capacity and embark on separate routes. That’s the journey of maturity and growing up all about. References 1. Page 33-34, Poem – V; All American Poem – Matthew Dickman 2. Page 21 -24, Poem – Public Parks; All American Poem – Matthew Dickman 3. Page 60 – 61, Act 2 – This is our Youth – Kenneth Lonergan Read More