GenMe
Jack Zhu
ENGL 0 15
Mathew Wilson
13/10/2013
Live to be themselves
If we assimilate the life as a huge river with rogue, endless waves, then some of us are standing on the steady, vast main land, some of us tried to enter the river and were dashed back to the main land by the waves later, some of us are still struggling to swim across the river, fighting the surge with our own strength, and only little of us has successfully swum across it, standing on the other shore, where others who have not ever been to there can tell nothing about.
In “An Army of One: Me”, the author Twenge unravels certain traits of “Generation Me” in her article. She concludes that Genme always feel overconfident about themselves, saying that they tend to overestimate their ability in some aspects. Meanwhile, in the “Selections from Into the wild”, we learn a legendary story about Chris McCandless, who happens to born in the “Genme” era. After cutting all his communication with civilized world, McCandless headed down to the snow-covered trail in Alaska alone with only a little supply. After living in such extreme environment by eating roots and wild berries for more than 100 days, he died in an abandoned bus since he had mistakenly eaten some toxic food.
Some may argue that McCandless is such an arrogant idiot; he ignored the power of nature and went into the extreme “jungle” of mosquitoes and beasts with little supply and no professional guide at all, and death is the best evidence of his self-importance. Is McCandless the kind of narcissist that Twenge writes about? In my own opinion, yes, McCandless is a narcissist, but definitely not that kind of narcissist Twenge mentions. Twenge argues in her article that “Narcissists are bad relationship partners and can be difficult to work with” (Twenge 492), but this runs contrary to the description of Mccandless in Jon’s article, “he was a dandy kid. Real courteous, and he didn’t cuss or use a lot of that there sland.”(Krakauer 204).
ENGL 0 15
Mathew Wilson
13/10/2013
Live to be themselves
If we assimilate the life as a huge river with rogue, endless waves, then some of us are standing on the steady, vast main land, some of us tried to enter the river and were dashed back to the main land by the waves later, some of us are still struggling to swim across the river, fighting the surge with our own strength, and only little of us has successfully swum across it, standing on the other shore, where others who have not ever been to there can tell nothing about.
In “An Army of One: Me”, the author Twenge unravels certain traits of “Generation Me” in her article. She concludes that Genme always feel overconfident about themselves, saying that they tend to overestimate their ability in some aspects. Meanwhile, in the “Selections from Into the wild”, we learn a legendary story about Chris McCandless, who happens to born in the “Genme” era. After cutting all his communication with civilized world, McCandless headed down to the snow-covered trail in Alaska alone with only a little supply. After living in such extreme environment by eating roots and wild berries for more than 100 days, he died in an abandoned bus since he had mistakenly eaten some toxic food.
Some may argue that McCandless is such an arrogant idiot; he ignored the power of nature and went into the extreme “jungle” of mosquitoes and beasts with little supply and no professional guide at all, and death is the best evidence of his self-importance. Is McCandless the kind of narcissist that Twenge writes about? In my own opinion, yes, McCandless is a narcissist, but definitely not that kind of narcissist Twenge mentions. Twenge argues in her article that “Narcissists are bad relationship partners and can be difficult to work with” (Twenge 492), but this runs contrary to the description of Mccandless in Jon’s article, “he was a dandy kid. Real courteous, and he didn’t cuss or use a lot of that there sland.”(Krakauer 204).