Susan Orlean, in her piece, “The American Man at Age Ten” provides an interesting perspective on the life and concerns of the average ten year old boy. She paints the picture extremely well. The language evokes clear images from her strong uses of metaphors “each one comes as a fresh, hard surprise, like finding a razor blade in a candy apple” (102). Her descriptions clearly paint pictures of both the character of Colin and his surroundings.
The story is woven through an interesting tapestry of detail that creates a character that is representative of the youthful boys of days past. It brings older female readers back to a time when their male counterparts stole, hit, and bullied girls to get their attention, when crushes and cooties ran rampant on the playground. For me, bringing in the gender relations when discussing Colin, did not make a lot of sense. True, at that age, a conception of the opposite sex is developed, but he is such a dynamic character I would much rather see her bring in extra information about the age, in which, children really formulate substantive world views.
For me the discussion of the difference between AIDS and HIV, the emphasis on recycling, or the propensity towards imaginary games based on videogame or comic book characters would be more relevant to the story. The gender relations would be more telling for an profile on Japeth, who seems to be a womanizer in the making. It would be interesting to me to see what he is like at age twenty, probably still game playing with women and, most likely, Nintendo 360.
Overall, I think the piece is extremely engaging. The reader follows the experience of Colin to discover what he is going to say next. Colin’s precocious nature would suit him well for an appearance on “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” She does an extremely good job of portraying Colin with the right amount of detail so that the reader can really relate to the character, whose coherent and consistent, creation is important in creating a relationship of exchange between the author and her audience.
2 comments:
Awesome response, Jenn! I thought you did an excellent job of really reading beyond the content of the piece and analyzing the craft.
I agree that Orlean wrote a great narrative. I was engaged the entire time and read the piece from start to finish without pausing. I too constantly had an image in my head due to Orlean's use of metaphor and crisp imagery.
I also agree that I would have liked to know less about Colin's girl pursuits and more about his other interests. Japeth definitely sounds like the boy I would stay away from 20 years later, too.
Overall, I think you did an excellent read of the piece!
haha Jenny I like your comment!
Jenn- I too was engaged by this piece but was somewhat turned off when she stated "If Colin Duffy and I were to get married..." and then proceeded to go into depth about his sex education experience. Some of the details were really kind of wierd to me. Why do you think she mentioned them? Was there another motive? I'm stumped.
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