A Visit From The Goon Squad: Chapter Analysis

When reading Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad the main story is fragmented into many recounts of the past culminating in the final two chapters, “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” and “Pure Language”, taking place sometime in the near to far future. What is suggested in these final entries is the world that we are becoming. Egan presents funny and cynical views on the environment, the influence of technology, and the upcoming generation. Egan creates a future that is reasonably close to modern times with such hints towards events like a baby boom in the United States following the war (assumingly the Middle-Eastern conflict). What is painted is a chilling reality that could very well be in our lifetimes this being something that many readers might miss due the fact that we are already moving towards it.
Beyond what is an intentionally facetious chapter, “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” is the only chapter in the book that lived through a child. Alison becomes the first of the characters to present the readers with a view of what is to become and it becomes evident, although missed by our class during discussion, is that mankind has caused a great amount of destruction to the environment. While

After the fall out of Hurricane Sandy, New York could very well surrounded by huge levees one day soon. A lawn being a commodity is not even a futuristic nightmare, California has been experiencing a drought for nearly two years; do you think a lawn is even a possibility for a middle class family? Technology is everywhere at every level development especially in the early stages, but is it really as out of hand as Egan suggest; we don’t know and possibly couldn’t know until it’s too late. Egan isn’t taking this from science fiction, she is taking this from real