Preview

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1131 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Introduction

This essay will emphasize on whether or not the author of the story, “A Visit from the Goon Squad”, Jennifer Egan, thinks that adult behavior is shaped by one’s youth. The essay will focus on discussing the view of the author concerning whether one’s youth is responsible for shaping his or her adult behaviors.

The author has taken time to show her feelings and connections in relation to ones youthful experiences and their ultimate old age. In the short story, the connections between the characters are all based on the fact that they were all friends and had connections to each other in the past. The connection is still there many years later. The story revolves around elaborating the lives of key characters so as to show that the author supports the notion one’s youth is responsible for shaping his or her adult behaviors. The one factor that has changed is how they perceive themselves and the journey that they have taken. This is because they are all at the story begins with great emphasis on Bennie. Salazar has been a music producer for a very long time. He has met very many people in his life and he has helped them produce the music that they were interested in, rock and roll. At the time, it was the genre of music that had the power to communicate to very many people. The connection to Sasha is drawn from the fact that Bennie hired her to work for him a very long time ago.

The journey for both of them has been long and tiring. In A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan notes that each and every character is as a result of the journey that he or she took during their youth. This has shaped their thoughts, opinions and all the things that make them who they are in the novel. The term goon has been used to denote the silent robber that has reversed the general perception of the timeline that family, friends, acquaintances and loved ones had together. At each and every step, the author shows that the negative thoughts and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Teenagers are shown in a variety of texts to be, violent, disrespectful, disruptive and corrupt. S.E. Hinton’s novel ‘The Outsiders’ reveal teenagers to be juvenile delinquents who are violent and whose only interest is remaining faithful to their gang and its members.…

    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Understanding and accepting the teenage brain takes substantial persuasion and a remarkable memory of one’s own adolescent years. Knowing about teenagers is one concept, but synthesizing your experiences with theirs and perceiving the logic behind their actions is another. Teenagers are a subculture with their ideas and actions alone. In The Primal Teen, Barbara Strauch makes her point valid by appealing to the audience about a familiar, and often unanswered topic, by using rhetorical connections and proven statistics. Although the teen brain differs from children and adults dramatically, Barbara Strauch makes the difficult times of the lives of everyone involved simpler and brings it to a more positive light.…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “That’s what it was always about. Shedding your past. Creating yourself from nothing, Now I realize that that’s what attracted me to Willie Bodega. Willie Bodega didn’t just change me and Blanca’s life, but the entire landscape of the neighborhood. Bodega would go down as a representation of all the ugliness in Spanish Harlem and also all the good it was capable of being. Bodega placed a mirror in front of the neighborhood and in front of himself. He was street nobility incarnated in someone who still believed in dreams. And for a small while, those dreams seem as palpable as that dagger Macbeth tried to grab. From his younger days as a Young Lord to his later days as Bodega, his life had been triggered by romantic ideal found only in those poor bastards who really wanted to be poets but got grafted and sent to the front lines. During that time Bodega would create a green light of hope. And when that short-lived light went supernova, it would leave a blueprint of achievement and desire for anyone in the neighborhood searching for new possibilities.”…

    • 974 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Owen Meany Analysis

    • 1339 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Until that summer, my long apprenticeship to maturity struck me as arduous and humiliating; Randy White had confiscated my fake draft card, and I wasn't yet old enough to buy beer-I wasn't independent enough to merit my own place to live, I wasn't earning enough to afford my own car, and I wasn't something enough to persuade a woman to bestow her sexual favors upon me. Not one woman had I ever persuaded! Until the summer of '62, I thought that childhood and adolescence were a purgatory without apparent end; I thought that youth, in a word,…

    • 1339 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Thesis – The character of Andrew is used to explore moral reasoning, identity statuses, and the effect of peer pressure on an adolescent development.…

    • 1201 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Dax Cowart

    • 4530 Words
    • 17 Pages

    Ethics CPD Article 5: Assistance in dying: Dax’s Case and other reflections on the issue…

    • 4530 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maturity is one’s ability to respond to their environment appropriately, which is gained by learning from experiences and situations in life. On the surface, maturity would seem to always accompany age, because one learns to react to their surroundings over time. However, Buddy and his peers in Tom Perotta’s, Bad Haircut, prove that this is not always the case. The story travels through Buddy’s adolescence, and shows differences in how he and his friends make decisions under certain circumstances. Even though Buddy is less experienced, he is more mature than some of his peers.…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Secondly, Adriana and Gil. It is romance from fantasy. They are same. In other words, they think of the beautiful and picturesque past, and true to sentimental. But Adriana misses and stays the past. Gil consider the past as just precious period. He realizes that it is by no means missing object and should move toward the future.…

    • 387 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    White Angel Analysis

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The first thing that comes to mind reading the story is the repeated usage of music and drugs. Since the story is set in the sixties, the music was changing – much like the attitudes and beliefs of the people. Drug use was becoming more common and accepted. Music was filled with lyrics of love, peace, and happiness. In even the second sentence, we see the significance of music as their radios “sang out love all day long” (90). As the story goes on, we learn more about how important to the story the music is. The father is a high-school music teacher and plays the clarinet in the basement, the mother sings to herself as she works in the house, and Bobby plays a harmonica. If someone in the house isn’t making their own music, they are listening to a record. Specific songs are placed strategically to aid the tone and setting of the story. The lyrics support the storyline and set the mood. People in real life use music as a distraction from their problems - it has been shown to decrease stress and calm people down. Drugs provide detachment from reality. They allow the user to feel good even in the harshest of times. This…

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Applewhite On Ageism

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages

    For example, her use of statistics and references to different studies appeals to the younger and older generations of careerists. On the other end of the spectrum, the author often uses language that is more generalized to the population in its entirety such as “…A dumb and destructive obsession with youth so extreme that experience has become a liability.” In total, the tone of this text is quite serious. For this subject matter, a serious tone is appropriate in order to not make light of a situation that truly needs attention from…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Older Party bears Scarcity of Hope and trust: choice of destination is prohibited through the basis of unaccompanied supervision of the older party, in case one is confronted with a heinous situation that the teen is not at fault for, the notion that adolescence are deprived of self Restraint and Vigilance filters in the minds of the older party, and expect nothing but to react in desperation and fear that one cannot protect their well-being.…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Teens have a reputation for disobeying the rules that are given to them. From a teen being scolded for not completing their chores, to being yelled at for promiscuous behavior. Teenagers often make impulsive decisions to justify their lifestyle. The play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare involves two teenagers that end up giving up their lives, even after the many warnings given from their parents and peers. This play shows Shakespeare’s ingenious method of accurately portraying the way a teenager tends to act out against rules that limit their impulsive behavior.…

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story is based on the life of protagonist and college student, Sophia Danko, and professional bull rider, Luke. Many other characters appear as the author shifts between present time and the late 1950’s. The author compares Sophia and Luke's relationship to the relationship of Ira and Ruth, two more pertinent protagonist in the story. Ruth is a privileged girl similar to Sophia, and…

    • 861 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Like Father, Like Daughter

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Let's face it; there comes a time in life when teenagers cannot stand their parents. Arguments ensue, many things that should never be said are spoken aloud, and the teenagers think that they have nothing in common with their parents. However, when Sarah Vowell shares her experience in the essay “Shooting Dad,” she gives the audience a complete, retrospective look at her teenage feuds, which contrasts her relationship with her father today. Vowell uses her past experiences with her father in order to emphasize the strong bond that they both now have, while acknowledging that even though teenagers may clash with their parents over their beliefs or hobbies, they will still have something, be it mannerisms or interests that connects them to their parents. She begins her essay by introducing the reader to the arguments that she and her father used to have.…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    There have been certain qualities constantly attributed to youth such as passion, aggression, and impetuousness, which have been viewed in both negative and positive lights.. Many argue that “youth” is an inexperienced and immature stage of life and are in disagreement as to whether the qualities of youth can be beneficial for politics, or detrimental. Speculation has also led to debates about whether young adult brains are biologically ready to make tough decisions.…

    • 542 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays