This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan and All-American Poem by Matthew Dickman - Essay Example

English 14 November Compare and Contrast It is necessary to stress that both This is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan and All-American Poem by Matthew Dickman focus the readers’ attention on the same issue. Both the works demonstrate the difficult passage or transition into adulthood. It is easy to look at the world with a young person’s eyes with the help of the writings under consideration. The authors demonstrate the youth’s perception of adulthood and attitude towards various things. Among them are: drugs and their use, relations with adults, sexual liaison and all other challenges young people face while transitioning into adulthood. Both This is Our Youth and All-American Poem are very valuable because they help to understand young people and the problems they are trying to handle. These writings are didactic and useful for educators, as it is impossible to teach young people successfully without getting into their shoes. Moreover, Kenneth Lonergan and Matthew Dickman write so that the reader does not criticize the youth, but sympathizes with all people who are just one their way to become independent and responsible. The play This is Our Youth describes the events that start in Dennis’s one-room apartment. It is on the upper West Side of Manhattan in New York. Warren comes to his friend Dennis because of a serious quarrel with his father. It turns out that Warren has much money and marijuana with him. When Dennis gets to know about this, he becomes afraid of the father who will be searching his son to get the money back. However, Warren states that he has nowhere else to go and stays in Dennis’s apartment. According to the protagonist’s point of view, he was kicked out because he smokes too much. When Dennis and Warren stay together, the first opens the eyes of the second on his own personality. It turns out that nobody respects and likes Warren because of his habit of provoking other people. Moreover, Dennis calls Warren an idiot. This offends Warren; however, he is allowed to stay with Dennis until he finds out what to do with money. In order to get more finance, the guys decide to sell Warren’s toys. The conflict with Warren’s father does not prevent boys from living a luxury life. They have drugs, prefer hotels for spending nights and meet with girls. Warren and his girlfriend Jessica have an argument. The latter is upset because her favorite statue is broken and, moreover, she had problems with mother because staying out of home all night long without a call. These relations come to their end. There is one more event that makes Warren’s life miserable – his father comes. Both of them say “I hate you” during their conversation. In the end of the play Dennis again tells that Warren is a loser. Young people sit together and Warren realizes that Dennis is not on his side. It is necessary to take into consideration the fact that all three characters of This is Our Youth face challenges with the transition to the adulthood. On the one hand, they have nothing to worry about because of rich parents’ support. On the other hand, they lack parental attention and that is why they fill it by means of various things. In the majority of cases young people choose drugs, sexual relations and alcohol to do that. These things fill the emptiness in their souls and help to look elder. Warren is the only person who realizes that his life has no sense. The protagonist notes that people around him do not respect everything that is important from his perspective. This thought comes to his head during the quarrel with Jessica. At that moment, she asks Warren to give her a baseball cap from his collection. This is the indicator of her negligence of Warren’s personality. The understanding of this makes the guy refuse meeting with Jessica the next week. The protagonist cannot find understanding and respect even among his peers, Jessica and Dennis. This is one of the most difficult challenges on his passage into adulthood. Both Jessica and Dennis lack sensitivity. However, the same quality is encouraged in Warren by Jessica and Dennis’s behavior. Thus, no one expects that Warren will start to worry about his father suffering because of the daughter’s death. This means that the protagonist’s carelessness is substituted by sympathy and attentiveness towards other people. Kenneth Lonergan shows drug use and sexual liaison in the play. The relationship between Warren and Jessica turn out to be free, just for having sex. There is no responsibility for actions and another person. That is why Warren easily makes a decision to quit with the girl. The latter seem to be a bit light-minded; she even does not phone her mother to say that she will not be at home during all night. This demonstrates that the girl lacks respect towards older people. The character of Jessica does not undergo any changes throughout the play. The same can be told about Dennis. These two people seem to be aware of their own personality. Warren is not sure of his identity. However, he finds answers to some of his questions by the end of the play. The observation of Jessica and Dennis help him to do that. Drugs are a problem that prevents young people from becoming older and more responsible. Warren is kicked out by his father because of drugs. However, he does not stop taking them. It should be noted that drugs are applied by people to forget about problems and relax. However, they do not help to change the situation for the better. In some way drugs symbolize inability to act as an adult. They seem to be a toy given to a child to calm him down. Actually, drug taking is a serious challenge on the way to become older. It is a mthod to avoid responsibility and the consequences of one’s actions. It is impossible to say nothing about the symbolism of the play under consideration. The dominant symbol here is Warren’s suitcase with toys. The protagonist calls it “the proceeds from my unhappy childhood.” So, the suitcase stands for loneliness faced by the character in his childhood. Nothing seems different even when Warren becomes older. There is one more important symbol applied by Kenneth Lonergan to demonstrate the challenges faced by the characters of the play. It is Dennis’s studio apartment. It is very small and stands for the limited lives of two guys. These symbols help the author to reveal the message of the play. It turns out that the major problem that makes one’s passage into childhood difficult is loneliness and parental negligence. As for All-American Poem written by Matthew Dickman, it is a collection of poems written by a young author. This gives the readers an opportunity to see the world with young eyes and understand it from this perspective. The poems from the above-mentioned collection give the information about landscapes full of images of single mothers, public parks, Disney World, shopping malls, sexual encounters, white supremacists and working-class strife. In fact, the author covers everything that is usually interesting for young people of his age. According to Hoagland’s point of view, these poems do not have ulterior intellectual pretensions, but they are rather spiritual in character. They are free and easy and unself-conscious, full of sensuous aspiration, lusty, full of metaphors (Dickman, 11). While reading the poems under consideration it is easy to notice the naivety of the author. This trait is seen in the following lines of Snow: “Let’s put on our gloves and scarves And walk out under the birches Into the white world!” (Dickman, 11) In childhood and early youth all people seem to be kind and unable to harm others. Even if it happens, goodness always wins. Young people do not realize the cruelty of the world around them, everyone seem to be friendly and attentive to them. However, in the majority of cases smiles are just the masks. Inability to see the reality prevents young people from becoming older. There is no white world and a person who thinks in other way is still just a child. In Snow the author mentions Santa and is dreaming of making angels from snow. It is easy to understand that the narrator deeply believes that all these things are possible, because there are numerous similes and details demonstrating that. For example, Santa has a pipe that “smells like cinnamon.” Practically all poems from the collection touch upon the things that are important to young people. They are dreams, relatives, love and work. Thus, in Some Days the narrator mentions that he had a job to open the cafe. There is a poem entitled Love. Here then readers may familiarize themselves with the point of view upon love and relations uttered by a young person. It is easy to see that here, like in the play by Kenneth Lonergan, there is unserious attitude towards relations between two sexes. Falling in love is just like a game for the narrator. From his perspective, it is not very difficult to find someone to fall in love with. It can be done in any place. Thus, he writers: “We fall in love at weddings and auctions, over glasses Of wine in Italian restaurants… And we can’t keep our hands off each other Until we can – So we turn to rubber masks and handcuffs, falling in love again” (Dickman, 15). Love for the narrator does not mean feelings and relations; it means an opportunity to have sex with someone. There are the lines stating that “sometimes love is lying across the bed.” This point of view is not serious and a challenge making the transition into adulthood difficult. The theme of alcohol is present in All-American Poem. In County Music the readers may come across the consequences of taking alcohol. This makes the narrator aggressive. He even wants someone to beat him. He does not control his behavior and slaps his girlfriend over the face. This cannot be called an action of an intelligent adult. At this moment the narrator is selfish and thinks only of himself, how to feel good. This state, selfishness or egoism, aggression are another challenges that do not let a person to pass into adulthood. To conclude, it is necessary to stress that both This is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan and All-American Poem by Matthew Dickman are valuable because they help to understand younger generation better. It is very important to do that in order to establish good relations with the youth. Moreover, the writings under consideration teach the readers to value youth and childhood. The problems at this time period of human life are trifles in comparison with ones that occur in adulthood. Besides, the texts discussed above teach to look at the world around us with the eyes of young people. This helps to enjoy life and nature despite all problems. The writings are very useful for parents; they show that lack of parental attention and proper upbringing may lead to serious problems during the transition into adulthood. Works Cited Dickman, Matthew. All-American Poem. United States: American Poetry Review, 2008. Print. Lonrgan, Kenneth. This is Our Youth. The United States: Dramatic Play Service Inc., 2000. Print. Read More