Blame in "Teenage Wasteland"

Daisy is just a mother trying to do her best. There is no simpler interpretation than that. Her best may not be good enough, in fact, it may be damaging to her cause. In “Teenage Wasteland” it is difficult to place blame for Donny’s troubles. There are many people who have contributed to his development including him. The story gives little fault to Donny and so did our class. This perplexed me. Yes, he is young; however, he clearly deserves some credit for his actions. Daisy can also be credited, but for how much? I believe the poor path Donny is following lies in the hands of many people.

To start, the lack of much of a father character in the story certainly did not help. Because we rarely hear from him, we can only assume he barely plays a role in Donny’s life. This draws the attention to Daisy. However, I maintain that Donny could have used a strong male role model. Next, I’d like to turn to Cal. He arrives in Donny’s life only after his path has begun the downward spiral. Yet, Cal represented hope. He was highly recommended, made Donny happy, and at first even seemed to make an impact. Due to those facts, it is hard to bear that Donny did not permanently change from their relationship. Also, it shows that clearly Cal did not help; whether or not he negatively affected him is up for debate. The final candidate besides Daisy is Donny himself. Similar to the other characters, he does not warrant all the blame, but he did not help. At some point, he must have realized his actions were harmful to not only himself but also his family. Why he did not change then? The story will not allow us to know. Instead, “Teenage Wasteland” highlights Daisy’s responses to his life. She had some trouble raising Donny right, and once the problems became more serious her reactions became more scattered. Daisy does deserve some blame for the outcome. How much is impossible to determine. However, I certainly do not believe her insecurities, which are demonstrated in some areas of the story, are a direct cause to Donny’s troubles. As a reader it is unfair to hold them against her for two reasons. First, we cannot be sure she displays them in front of Donny enough to be a weak parent for him. Second, is she not allowed to have insecurities? I felt as if the class answered yes. There is not some point in our lives when we will lose such a weakness. Therefore, it seems obvious that there is no one person whom the finger can be pointed at.

Why Donny left, what went wrong, what could have been different? These are all questions we, as readers, get to decide for ourselves since the story does not. To me, in addition to such quandaries, I wonder why we are so concerned. I understand the family was torn apart, and I do see this snapshot (this being the specific scenes we see in the story) as a crisis. However, who is to know the future? Donny may learn his lesson away from home. He may return and reunite the four of them. I like to think that Donny finds something new out of life while away from home. He is so altered that when he returns home, not after too long, he can apologize to his parents, something extremely hard to do. Yet, we cannot know the conclusion. We are only meant to decide for ourselves.