In the story "Teenage Wasteland" by Anne Taylor, Donny is to blame for his own disappearance because he didn't put enough effort into school, and he had a bad group of friends. Donny’s mom, Daisy, tried to help her son by, “[checking] Donny’s assignments every day. She sat next to him as he worked, trying to be encouraging” (Tyler 287). Daisy tried to help Donny by encouraging him to do good and helping work through his homework, but didn’t take full advantage of this opportunity. He had easily fixable mistakes like “the sloppy mistakes in math, the illogical leaps in his English themes, [and] the history questions left blank if they required research” (Tyler 287). If he had taken full opportunity and had actually tried instead of being lazy,
