Baby Boomers and Generation X
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that some people did bad things, but there was a clear explanation given
for that kind of behavior: they were bad people. Wondering, I found that
in Huckleberry Finn some seriously bad things — things like the
possession and mistreatment of black slaves, like stealing and lying, even
hke killing other people in duels — were quite often done by people who
not only thought of themselves as exemplarily moral but, by any other
standards I knew how to apply, actually were admirable citizens. Tom
and Huck did not hve in a simple world. The world they lived in was
filled with complexities and contradictions — was, in short, I was surprised
to discover, in many ways quite a lot like the world I appeared to be living
in myself (Morrison xxxiv).
In a world where Xers have the technology to talk to anyone in the world
about any topic they choose before they even reach puberty, the ability to shelter
kids from reality is no longer possible; we must struggle instead to find ways to
introduce them to the complexities of their situations as early as possible. In many
ways Huck Finn represents Bridgers, either as the inner city kid learning to jump
out of bed and hit the floor at the sound of a drive-by shooting, or the decadent
upper class Manhattanite yuppie pictured in Less Than Zero, overdosing on cocaine
at a glitzy party. As Morrison further describes:
Although Huck complains bitterly of rules and regulations, I see him
to be running from not external control but from external chaos. Nothing
in society makes sense; all is in peril. Upper-class, churchgoing, elegantly
housed families annihilate themselves in a psychotic feud, and Huck has
to drag two of their corpses from the water — one of whom is a just-made
friend, the boy Buck; he sees the public slaughter of a drunk; he hears the
vicious plans of murderers on a wrecked steamboat; he spends a large
portion of the book in the company of “[Pap’s] kind of people” (Twain
166) — the fraudulent, thieving Duke and King who wield brutal power
over him, just as his father did. No wonder that when he is alone, whether
safe in the Widow’s house or hiding from his father, he is so very frightened
and frequently suicidal. (Morrison xxxiv)
So who is this generation, and what do they believe? Initial writings from
people like Douglas Copland portrayed this new generation as lost. Net surfing,
nihilistic nipple piercers whining about McJobs. Latchkey legacies fearful of
commitment. Passive and powerless, they were content, it seemed, to party on in a
Wayne’s Netherworld, one with more anti-heroes such as Kurt Cobain, Dennis
Rodman, the Menendez brothers. These portrayals were wrong but generally