Angry Young Man

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Recommended: Misinterpretation of mental illness

In the novel, Angry Young Man by Chris Lynch, seventeen year old Alexander - “Xan,” as he prefers to be called - is the protagonist. He and his big brother Robert, the narrator of the book, have different fathers but live in the same apartment with their mom. Alexander has a complicated personality as he is mentally conflicted. The many disappointments that he faces and has faced in the past are the reason for his complex nature. Alexander is a very hot-tempered, socially awkward and misguided teenager.
First of all, as the title of the novel reads, Alexander is a very ‘angry young man’. To start, Alexander gets frustrated at small things. Robert even describes it: “My brother has possessed a highly developed sense of outrage for as long as I can remember. Once, in high school, at lunch I ate my carrot cake before eating my chicken a la king, and he moved to another table” (Lynch 36). This reaction clearly reflects a hot-tempered person. Likewise, Alexander’s hot temper is shown during a soccer game. The opponents play really rough but he gets no calls, and when he defends them aggressively, they pretend to fall and over exaggerate. Consequently, he rams one of the opponents in the right pectoral and says, “I’ll give you something to cry about” (Lynch 34). Lastly, when Alexander realizes that the debt collector, ‘loan shark’, is bothering his mom, he snaps: “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all” (Lynch 50). One time, he and Robert get really angry and sandwich him, pushing him from side to side (Lynch 71). This shows his rage because he does not think wisely and loses his cool quickly. In addition to being hot-tempered, Alexander is also socially awkward.
Moreover, Alexander is very socially awkward. To begin with, he wears ...

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...treme ways and cannot distinguish between what is going too far or not. Finally, when Harry is kicked out of class in college, Alexander fights for equal rights and vandalizes the school with: “EDUCATION FOR ALL… IS A GOOD CAUSE” (Lynch 149). Alexander means well but is misguided which causes no one to understand or credit him with doing something noble.
The short read, Angry Young Man by Chris Lynch, depicts the very complicated personality of Alexander, a seventeen year old boy who has been through and goes through several hardships like never seeing his father, having a hard time at school and much more. He is a very hot-tempered, socially awkward and misguided boy. His character is a very complex one which Chris Lynch does a great job of describing.

Works Cited

Lynch, Chris. Angry Young Man. New York, New York, U.S.A: Simon & Schuster, Inc., August 2012.

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