Teenage Angst in Texas - Essay Example

“Teenage Angst in Texas” Gail Caldwell, Pulitzer Prize winner in 2001, gives her compelling account of her particular teenage angst with her sincere and honest voice in the article “Teenage Angst in Texas” (Caldwell, 2006). There is a mixture of angst and ennui in her words when she refers to those strong feelings of anxiety, dread, depression, anguish, malaise, and boredom experience during her youth in the Sixties. These mixed feelings are motivated by a teleological search for meaning, which is characteristic of teenagers when they face their own emotions and the world around them. Many times teenagers become “rebels without a cause”. Moreover Caldwell seems to be a “rebel with a cause” as her life after these experiences has been really meaningful in the literary and journalistic worlds. Before trying to analyze Caldwell’s article in detail, it is useful to study briefly the terms “ennui” and “angst”. It is very important to keep in mind that the term “angst” is used for the tile of the article even though this term is not used in its body. Instead the term “ennui” is actually used in the text of the article. This is a very relevant point to remember. The Wikipedia defines ennui as “a reactive state to wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious stimuli: suffering from a lack of interesting things to see, hear, or do (physically or intellectually), while not in the mood of "doing nothing."” (Wikipedia, 2006b). Ennui is much more related to “boredom” or “depression” than to the feelings experienced through “angst”, as the latter word is related to psychological or spiritual emptiness. Angst has several meanings. A widely used sense of this word has been given by Danish philosopher Kierkegaard in the book “The Concept of Anxiety”. For Kierkegaard “angst” with synonymous to “dread”, a profound and deep-seated spiritual or metaphysical condition of despair. The Wikipedia states the following about angst according to the views of Kierkegaard and the present use of the term: “While Kierkegaard's feeling of angst is fear of actual responsibility to God, in modern use, angst is broadened to include general frustration associated with the conflict between actual responsibilities to self, one's principles, and others (possibly including God).” (Wikipedia, 2006a). This last definition is appropriate to describe the feelings of Caldwell as described in her article. At the beginning of the article Caldwell states the following: “I was bored by the idea of mainstream success and alienated from what the world seemed to offer -- one of my poems from those days weighs heavily on the themes of coffins, societal hypocrisy and godlessness.” All these conflictive ideas spring out the lack of meaning that Caldwell found around her. This is a teleological concern that kept the youngster confused and depressed during the Sixties (“a war somewhere far away, a civil rights movement over in the Deep South” (Caldwell, 2006). This period of time was marked with a lot of cultural, political and social turmoil. There was a real revolution going on in the United States and the rest of the world during this time. But Caldwell was not addressing the general issues with her dad. On the contrary, her arguments with her dad were about more common topics of everyday life: “Instead we fought about curfews or bad boyfriends; we fought about straightening up and flying right. We fought about everything but the truth, which was that I would be leaving soon.” (Caldwell, 2006). She was really a rebel, but a rebel with a cause. She couldn’t find meaning in anything as she states with the following words: “In some ways the tempests of my adolescence had set me against myself; I'd found that introspection couldn't buy you love, that poetry helped only momentarily, that straight A's and spelling bees were no guarantee of knowing where to turn.” (Caldwell, 2006). In a society full of non-sense, of lack of purpose in its directions, it is not strange that Caldwell found herself trapped with feelings of emptiness. She even considered men to be a threat to her identity: “Worse and more pervasive, I was maturing under the assumption that you should never let men know how smart you were, or how mouthy -- a girl's intelligence, brazenly displayed, was seen as impolite, unfeminine and even threatening.” (Caldwell, 2006). Her life was really a mess as she couldn’t express herself with complete freedom. Her angst and ennui have driven her to a point of no connection with anybody, not even with her self. This kind of feeling is characteristic of youth, but it is also very common in any human being trapped in a partialist world where the universalist principles regarding the unconditional love of God has been lost for a long period of time throughout history. The distorted vision of the wrath of God has been responsible for the belief in a vengeful and punitive God instead of a loving, graceful and remedial God. The discipline of God is seen as punitive (Hell) rather than remedial (degrees of glory or universal salvation). So there is a lot of distortion about the real meaning of the love of God. This deeply-rooted distortion has been responsible to create a partialist culture all around the world. Any human being will eventually feel like Caldwell felt living in a world filled with wrong worldviews. It is not surprising that Caldwell felt ennui and angst in a society filled with hypocrisy, insecurity and emptiness from the philosophical, political and theological points of view. The conditional love of God has replaced the unconditional love of God in a very astonishing way. Heaven is promised out of grace, but if anybody doesn’t behave then Hell awaits him after death. This is a conditional love of God in absolute contrast to the true unconditional love of God that it is clearly understood out of a correct interpretation of the biblical canon. Caldwell was lacking this kind of love. Deep inside of her she was longing for unconditional love. Angst and ennui spring out of this lack of meaning. Caldwell had feelings of godlessness most probably out of the inconsistent account of God given by a partialist society. The only way to escape out of the grip of angst and ennui was to leave away as it is clearly stated by Caldwell. She would go away trying to find meaning away from home. In the long run she was looking for unconditional love without being aware of this fact. That happens to most of Humankind that it is in search of that kind of love. Kierkegaard’s ideas motivated the Existentialist movement with Camus and Sartre as leaders. But Kierkegaard couldn’t spot the origin of this angst, which is related to unconditional love, not only to responsibility or freedom. Caldwell had existentialist feelings common to her time. It is interesting to see that Caldwell was not very interested to the musical world of that time. She doesn’t mention The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Woodstock, etc. She even forgot to mention the surrounding environment full of drugs. She was worry about the draft, the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr and the Civil Rights Movement, etc. Her concerns are directed to social and political issues rather than cultural ones. Her worries are very serious in nature. They are valid concerns that are valid even in the present time of globalization and free markets. The solution is the same: unconditional love of God. There is no other way out. Caldwell was not aware of this spiritual lack, but it is still present in her account on an implicit way. Humankind is always in need of this kind of love. Philosophers and theologians would like to find it in order to explain it. The universalist position about unconditional love is the only possible solution. For example, the celebration of joy and humanity in Walt Whitman’s poetry as reflected in Song of Myself is a celebration of life that most human beings are longing for. The only way to peace and freedom from anxiety, dread, depression, angst, ennui, etc, is the unconditional love of God. That is what Caldwell was in search of. Works Cited Caldwell, Gail. “Teenage Angst in Texas”. (29 January, 2006). In Lives Magazine. The New York Times. 16 Feb. 2006. . Wikipedia. “Angst”. (11 February, 2006a). 16 Feb. 2006. . Wikipedia. “Ennui”. (16 February, 2006b). 17 Feb. 2006. . Read More