Teenage Wasteland

Donny is a 15-year-old teen undergoing a rough transition from adolescence to adulthood. In the opening lines of the story, Daisy describes Donny as a boy who once had an “endearing face” (Paragraph 1). As a teen, Donny is surly, talks back to his parents, and expresses contempt for them and their values. Over the course of the narrative, Donny engages in increasingly overt acts of rebellion. He is clearly unhappy.

The biggest shift in Donny comes after he begins working with Cal. Under Cal’s influence, Donny begins to improve his behavior but also begins to challenge his parents’ authority; with Cal’s support, Donny demands and gets relief from his parents’ rules and structure. Despite his parents’ decision to trust him, Donny is expelled from school, but he seems incapable of understanding that the expulsion is the result of his own choices. Daisy puts a stop to this more liberal regime and forces Donny to go to public school. Donny seems unhappy once again.

Donny’s last act is definitive: He leaves home and never makes contact with his parents again. His absence shows the evolution of his character from a boy chafing under parental authority to one who completely rejects that authority.

Cal is a tutor/mentor recommended to the Cobles by a psychologist. Cal, with his longish hair, handlebar mustache, blue jeans, and rock records, embodies the more permissive adult attitude toward young people and parenting that was one of the hallmarks of the 1960s. His emphasis on autonomy and his sense that relationships between parents and children are examples of coercive structures in society prove pivotal in leading Donny to abandon his parents. Cal’s approach fails to make Donny happy or improve his grades. Cal’s final pronouncement that Donny must have a mental health condition—a characterization that directly contradicts what the psychologist said—implies that Cal is an ineffective—perhaps even pernicious—mentor to Donny. In one of the many ironies of the story, Cal leaves Donny and the Cobles worse off than when they came to him.

Matt is Donny’s father and Daisy’s husband. Matt is a thinly developed character who is mostly absent because he is at work. He exemplifies the notion of fathers as distant, breadwinning figures who have no responsibility to engage with their children. His distance from Donny is one of the contributing factors to the bleakness of the Cobles’ family life.

Mr. Lanham is the principal at Donny’s school. His role as authority figure leads the Cobles to trust his advice to seek a psychologist to help Donny and later to allow Donny to work with Cal despite the lack of improvement in Donny’s grades. Mr. Lanham is yet another adult whose help for Donny proves detrimental.

Amanda is Donny’s younger sister. She is a slightly developed character, first as the child who is neglected as the Cobles help Donny and then as a child who avoids home because of Daisy and Matt’s unhappiness over Donny’s disappearance. The depressing nature of life in the Coble household seems bound to alienate Amanda from her parents as well.