Misconceptions

On the onset of Teenage Wasteland, Daisy, mother of Donny, appears to be well qualified for the position of mother, but as the story progresses one by one those qualifications diminish. The story opens with Daisy’s nostalgia to go back to a time when Donny was younger and more innocent. I think every mother has this feeling of wishing to go back to the simpler days, where her child’s departure was not in sight, but Daisy’s longing is different; it implies that she wants her son to revert back to his childhood self, because he was easier to govern. Every aspect of his description has connotations of his transformation from light to dark: his hair was once short and blonde, but now long and dark, those round cheeks, now sharp. As a former fourth grade teacher, Daisy knows how to deal with younger children, her comfort zone, but teenagers are more complex than the simple minds of fourth grades, and Daisy could not make the adjustment. Donny’s deviation from his younger characteristics appears to embarrass Daisy. Upon hearing the principal’s declaration of Donny’s laziness, disruptiveness, and disobedience her own insecurities consume her mind: what if he does not think her an adequate parent, or that she does not care, how must she, an overweight woman, appear? As a mother, it was her duty to decide how to punish and change Donny’s actions; this is the first time the reader sees Daisy fail, though only slightly, as a mother.

Daisy is blind to her failure as a mother; in her mind she followed every rule by enforcing curfew, making her son finish his homework before talking on the phone, or watching TV, but her Waterloo came through not understanding her son. This miscommunication disabled her to discipline her son’s manipulative ways, and aid his internal illness. Donny was a troubled kid, always acting out, and it is not clear if he was trying to get attention or if he was just hurting, but I think one reason for his disobedience was his the absence of his father without whom Donny lacked a male figure to look up to. When the counselor decided that Donny needed a tutor with a psychology background, the parents dutifully obliged, and in steprd Cal, Donny’s sudo-father figure, a middle aged kid who throughout the story is not associated with a single adult, except for his failed marriage. Donny’s parents notice his newfound happiness, but only at the expense of his failing grades and rude behavior. Cal persuades Donny’s parents to disregard their ideas of being a good parent by setting rules, and attributes these rules to Donny’s depression. His methods are absurd and unnatural, and Daisy even comments on the difficulty of following all of these rules. By allowing him to govern her son, she looses all of her authority, in a sense mirroring her relationship with Donny, becoming the child to an unprepared parent; but forgoing her authority was simple and complexity she could not handle.

Donny’s expulsion seems to cause Daisy’s awakening from this dream world of not having to deal with her son’s difficulties, and Cal is dismissed, but Donny was left without an adult to help him. At least Cal was someone to talk to and during those sessions his mental state was briefly lifted. Now, his mother is even farther from understanding his complex nature and put him into a school and watched him become the model student she always wanted but also suffer until he snapped and ran away.

I guess it is easy to blame the mother because the reader feels that the mother should share this bond with her son where she understands all of his incomprehensible emotions, of course, this is not realistic, but reality is often lost in the attempt to over simplify the characters in a piece of literature. (645)