, Research Paper
A Long Hard Road of Adolescence
Reading through the novel, Go Ask Alice, finding out all of the unbelievable, yet true, experiences and feelings of Alice is quite shocking. No matter how shocking they may seem, you can very easily relate those experiences and feelings to those of a typical day-in and day-out teenager. Those characteristics being loneliness, a generation gap, and defiance.
At the beginning of the novel, Alice finds herself to be very lonely. As like other teenagers, she goes through many emotional states that may lead to dieting , starving oneself, or binge eating. There are also finding such things as getting into school or club activities, possibly getting a job. Those few things would be the most reasonable approaches to resolving the problem and will keep teens from thinking lonely and depressing thoughts. Although what is unfortunate is that Alice, along with a lot of other teenagers, turn to drugs and alcohol as an escape. Once they start doing the drugs, the drugs replace those bad feelings.
The generation gap is another good characteristic seen in the novel. When Alice and her family moved, she started to change her appearance in ways her parents didn t like and they were also worried because of this change in Alice. She starts to dress like a hippie, wearing moccasins and clothes with fringe. She also starts to iron her hair flat instead of wearing it with a flip. With her parents nagging at her about her change in appearance made her want to breakdown. All the feelings bottle up inside of Alice, which leads to more drug use. The situation that Alice went through is a typical situation between any other teenager and their parents.
Many times throughout the novel, Alice pretty much does what she wants, when she wants no matter what. Such as when Chris and Alice go to San Francisco. They are in total control of themselves, Alice never likes when her parents try and tell her something. A lot like teenagers today go against their parents will. Alice was always welcomed home whenever she wanted to go back. Teenagers want to make decisions that are way beyond them, making them feel more like adults. Sometimes what they don t realize are all the consequences and pitfalls that come along with their adult-life decisions.
It can be easily seen how Alice s experiences and feelings are related to the typical day-in and day-out teenager. Maybe not to the same extremities, but there are a lot of cases that come too close to what Alice confessed in her diary.