Teenage Wasteland Conflict Essay

Ultimately, parental conflict can occur no matter what the situation is. It does not take a father's relentless yelling or a fathers death in order for a parent to affect their child negetively. Take Donny from Teenage Wasteland, for example. His family was middle-class and he did not come from a broken home as both of his parents cared for him and his sister. To the naked eye, this seems like the "perfect" famiy. However, just like the common phrase goes, "nothing is perfect", and this most defenantly applies to families. Donny's father seemed as though he was absent from Donny's life due to the fact, he was rarely mentioned in the story and when he was, he was "silent". However, Donny's mother, Daisy is quite the opposite as she becomes overwhelmingly concerned for Donny after finding out he is not performing well in school, even causing her to neglect her daughter's needs.

Daisy's naive and absent-minded beavior caused her be viewed as a pushover. She lets everyone else have a say on how to raise Donny, rather than taking the inituative in doing what she fet was appropriate for her son. It was the principle, Mr. Lanham, who suggested Daisy help her son out with school work. It was also Mr. Lanham who suggested Donny should see a psycologist. The psycologist examines Donny and comes to the conclusion that Donny has "no serious emotional problems". Though, Donny did not have any mental issues that caused him to act out, there was defantlty something bothering him, which was causing his poor behavior. The object of Donny's decline is made evident when the psycologist recommends a tutor named Cal, who Donny uses as a replacement for his father. A similar sitiaution to this was seen in the poem,