The students within The School weren’t able to fully enjoy life, until they learned about the pain that death caused. As everything was dying the students began to worry that all life had to offer was death, they had a similar mindset to the teenage characters in A Visit from the Goon Squad. “Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum” (Barthelme, 2). The students didn’t have anything physical to help them understand that death happens and people and things don’t stay in your life forever. They thought all life offered was pain and suffering. The students were all in a state of panic, because they believe this series of deaths and things leaving out of their lives such as the classroom pets would continue to happen until
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Jocelyn’s father left her once he realized that he was gay and he eventually died from Aids. “My father from Aids, but I hardly say him by then” (Egan 52). The pain of Jocelyn’s dad leaving her caused her to downward spiral into the toxic relationship she had with Lou and caused her to do drugs. “It was all for nothing…I got lost” (Egan, 86). Jocelyn clung to Lou because she believed she needed something physical to help her with the emotional pain of not having her father around. The students needed something physical similar to Jocelyn to help them emotionally. Jocelyn needed to be with Lou in order to compensate for her dad leaving her, on the other hand the students wanted Edgar to make love to Helen to bring a child into the world in order to compensate for the deaths they saw. “They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done… They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened” (Barthelme, 2). Jocelyn was lost in her relationship with lou, “I should kill you…Finally I can see him, that man who said you’re the best thing that ever happened to me” (Egan, …show more content…
He believed that they were responsible, “Some of them probably ... you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren’t looking” (Barthelme, 1). However the adult characters within A Visit from the Goon Squad seemed to take reasonability for some of the teenager’s actions. Sasha’s uncle Ted felt a sense of guilt for Sasha’s life in Naples. “Listen to me Sasha. You can do it alone. But it’s going to be so much harder” (Egan 232). The difference in blame can be seen by the way the two characters speak to the younger ones. Edgar looks to blame the students while Ted cast asides blame and looks into the interest of bettering Sasha. According to the Oxford Journals published by Oxford University Press, “"Blame is a kind of punishment …To express one's opinions as to the wrongness of a person's acts to that person and at the same time claim that one is not blaming him, because the very expression of the opinion to him constitutes blaming him” (J. E. R. Squires, 58). I believe Ted was stating his opinions to Sasha hoping that he could change her lifestyle. Ted only motivation was to be the role model his niece needed to better herself, “Twenty years after this one… Sasha had gone to college in New York… married late, and had two children. Ted, long divorced a grandfather would visit Sasha’s at home” (Egan, 233). On the other hand Edgar’s conversation seems
Jocelyn’s father left her once he realized that he was gay and he eventually died from Aids. “My father from Aids, but I hardly say him by then” (Egan 52). The pain of Jocelyn’s dad leaving her caused her to downward spiral into the toxic relationship she had with Lou and caused her to do drugs. “It was all for nothing…I got lost” (Egan, 86). Jocelyn clung to Lou because she believed she needed something physical to help her with the emotional pain of not having her father around. The students needed something physical similar to Jocelyn to help them emotionally. Jocelyn needed to be with Lou in order to compensate for her dad leaving her, on the other hand the students wanted Edgar to make love to Helen to bring a child into the world in order to compensate for the deaths they saw. “They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done… They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened” (Barthelme, 2). Jocelyn was lost in her relationship with lou, “I should kill you…Finally I can see him, that man who said you’re the best thing that ever happened to me” (Egan, …show more content…
He believed that they were responsible, “Some of them probably ... you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren’t looking” (Barthelme, 1). However the adult characters within A Visit from the Goon Squad seemed to take reasonability for some of the teenager’s actions. Sasha’s uncle Ted felt a sense of guilt for Sasha’s life in Naples. “Listen to me Sasha. You can do it alone. But it’s going to be so much harder” (Egan 232). The difference in blame can be seen by the way the two characters speak to the younger ones. Edgar looks to blame the students while Ted cast asides blame and looks into the interest of bettering Sasha. According to the Oxford Journals published by Oxford University Press, “"Blame is a kind of punishment …To express one's opinions as to the wrongness of a person's acts to that person and at the same time claim that one is not blaming him, because the very expression of the opinion to him constitutes blaming him” (J. E. R. Squires, 58). I believe Ted was stating his opinions to Sasha hoping that he could change her lifestyle. Ted only motivation was to be the role model his niece needed to better herself, “Twenty years after this one… Sasha had gone to college in New York… married late, and had two children. Ted, long divorced a grandfather would visit Sasha’s at home” (Egan, 233). On the other hand Edgar’s conversation seems