Analysis Of Teenage Wasteland By Anne Tyler

The only woman in the world who will still cradle you in her arms even if you've stabbed her loving heart is your mother.The short story “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler is about guilt and reveals mother’s feelings towards her children. A loving mother will feel guilty for anything that happens to her children, and even for that how they feel.

Mothers is the person who cares the most about her child. The story “Teenage Wasteland” tells about a common situation many families experience: a misunderstood child creates problems to his parents, not by fault, but because he feels unwanted. Any mother would feel like a bad mother after all, so did Daisy, Donny’s mom. “She had always told Donny he had talent, was smart, was good with his hands” (Tyler 288). Daisy was always trying to cheer her son up, but he was way too impulsive to understand what she truly means. Then Daisy realized that while she was so preoccupied with Donny’s problems, she forgot about her youngest daughter. “She couldn’t give as much attention to Donny's younger sister” (Tyler 287). Daisy loves her children like crazy, and would do anything to make them happy.

Anne Tyler

In her text she looks for probable reasons why kids decide to kill themselves and suggests, that parents that don’t listen what their kids say push them over the border to the point, where they no more want to live; they want to forever stay with their friends, who get them, and even die together. “Faith in the child, in the next generation, helps us through this life” (Gaines 13). Donna refers to the fact that adults should pay more attention to their kids, so they don’t get this feeling of loneliness. As Anne Tyler wrote in her story, “He will show up if he wants to” (Tyler 110), it is obvious that children, who feel unwanted have the least will to come back to the people that don’t want them in their