Jonathan Franzen Liking Is For Cowards Analysis

B: Write an essay in which you analyse and comment on Jonathan Franzen’s essay ”Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”.

Part of your essay must focus on how Jonathan Franzen tries to engage a young audience and on the message of the essay.

Jonathan Franzen’s speech was given to the college students at Kenyon, Ohio, USA. The introduction part of the speech is Jonathan Franzen talking about his relationship to his newly purchased phone, and how he got rid of his old one. Choosing the subject of smartphones, definitely points in the direction of a younger audience, since adults rarely care for technology as much as the youth usually does. “… I replaced my three-year-old BlackBerry Pearl with a much more powerful BlackBerry Bold”. Obviously enough the speech isn’t an advertisement about what the new BlackBerry Bold can do, but since young people relate to technology, the college students might have their interest awoken of the wisely chosen subject. Continuing with the subject of phones the speech giver furthermore uses metaphors such as: “… or doing that spreading-the-fingers iPhone thing that makes images get bigger” to engage his
He hereby tries to create a judicial separation between the passionate real love, and the love for material goods. The speech giver mentions how material love is very costly for one to maintain, since: “The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff”. Cleverly enough he lets the low budget students know, that not only is the love for material goods expensive to maintain, it’s also not nearly as lasting and beneficial for yourself as real love. He sets up his own point as being the only smart choice in this