In her story, The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert describes the life of Eustace Conaway.   Eustace Conaway was a man who grew up with an unimaginable childhood.  Although his family looked like a normal functional family from the exterior, Eustace and his father had an unusual relationship.  As the eldest, his father had great expectations for his son.  His father drilled him in math and other subjects in front of guests and deprived him of food when he did not complete a certain set of problems correctly.  The strain in Eustace and his father’s relationship pushed Eustace to escape into nature and learn as much as he could about it.  When he turned seventeen, he moved out of his home and went onto becoming what Elizabeth Gilbert calls “The Last American Man”.  Eustace started his discovery by journeying across the Appalachian Trail, eating only what he can scavenge and sleeping in a tepee that he made with his own hands. Through his journey, he met a variety of people and made new acquaintances. His journey led him to teaching the skill that he acquired to students by giving lectures and showing them that they had the ability to live in the woods if they chose to do so, and giving them a new perspective on how thing work in the world.  His journey eventually led him to buying his own land and building his home in the woods.  He kept his home open to others who were interested in learning about nature.

                Gilbert portrays Eustace as an individual who is beyond the media and its antics.  Eustace, in a way, made his own “boy code”, as Pollack would put it.  His code did not restrict showing emotion, or having to show masculinity.  Eustace lived only by his own rules and was not particularly concerned with others opinions about him.  When on the Appalachian Trail, him and his friend, Frank, openly talked to each other about their feelings and their past.  It was completely normal to them both, because the only other thing that surrounded them was nature.  In hi interview, Eustace explained that everyone has the opportunity to shake off the media and do what they want to do with no obligations to what they have chosen. 

                Gilbert claims that Eustace became the “Last American Man”, by leaving society and becoming a man in true society, nature.  It almost seems that Eustace wants to recreate a society of his own that excludes the media and all of the things that come with it, but in reality he utilizes them and then tells others not to be influenced by it.  He starts his journey with nothing other than his knife and his tepee, and through his journey adapts more and more pieces of society.  This almost contradicts his belief completely, other than the claim that he uses it to show others his way of living. 

                One of the main reasons that Eustace ran became so intrigued with nature was his relationship with his father.  All of Eustace’s memories seem to be negative ones of his father.  Although he wanted to escape from the assertiveness of his father, he himself became the person who inherited this trait.  His father was very particular on how thing were done, similarly, Eustace had the same characteristic. The period of time when Donna Henry was living in Eustace’s tepee with him, Donna explained that she felt that “she was screwing something up and that her best efforts would never be enough to please this man” (Gilbert 78).  He always came down on her for something that she did not do a certain way, just as her father had done to him.    

                Altogether I think that Elizabeth Gilbert did a good job on putting the life of Eustace Conaway together.  However, in my opinion I think that Eustace was an individual who had goals in which he set out to accomplish, and someone who was so focused on his own goals that he only saw his accomplishments in the long run.  His many companions throughout his journey serve as mere acquaintances.  Who he recalls as good patrons who did a good job in keeping up with him. 

Like Mary Pipher in her book, Reviving Ophelia, William Pollack in his book, Real Boys, describes the troubles that adolescents face in everyday life.  They explore the various issues that these adolescents come across at school, with media, society, with their peers, and situations encountered with family.  Both authors interpret situations from patients and research from which they have observed.  They use this in order to make sense of what the newer generation of adolescents is experiencing and also to try to break the views that the media and society have on these young adults.  In some cases both authors share similar views and in other cases, the authors seem to take different approaches to situations.  While Pollack discusses the “Boy Code” that he claims is a major issue that adolescent boys face, Pipher uses Ophelia, a character from a Shakespearean play, as a symbolic figure to describe the troubles that adolescent girls encounter. 

Society seems to be one of the biggest issues that Pipher and Pollack both state puts pressure on these children.  The media depicts how an individual should look and how they should act.  For girls, Pipher claims that the media influences them to be thin and compliant to what others want and society further pushes these girls to fit these views.   Similarly, Pollack claims that the media also has a negative impact on the image of adolescent boys.  The media portrays these boys to have an aggressive, masculine exterior and society adds to this image by disapproving any expression of feelings. 

Pipher describes how television, magazines, the radio, and practically any sort of exposure including school seems to contribute to an image that these adolescents have, that they feel that they should fit into.  Pollack describes this image as the “Boy Code”, for adolescent boys.  He uses this to illustrate the strain that this code puts on these boys.  The code represents an image that these boys are forced to follow of face the consequences of being an outcast from society.  Although Pipher does not explicitly categorize an image of a girl into a code, she does take a similar approach to describing the image that girls are influenced to be in order to fit into society’s views.  In her approach, she uses a symbolic figure to describe how troubled and voiceless adolescent girl feel in the face of peer pressure, society and the media.  Pipher and Pollack describe the limits that girls and boys are limited to.  Adolescent boys are suppose to mask their feelings, show masculinity, “be tough should demand respect from others” and also should not display characteristics that adolescent girls are imagined to portray, such as showing any type of emotion.  Adolescent girls are expected to be a thin, seductive character that ends up being the very thing that endangers their physical and mental wellbeing.  These views, as Pipher and Pollack claim, contribute to decreases in self-esteem and continue pushing adolescent into a confusing bind that leads some of them to serious states of depression.   

Peer pressure is another aspect that Pipher and Pollack discuss contributes to the strain that girls and boys face through adolescents.  Through her many cases, Pipher finds that most adolescent girls find the need to compare and compete with their peers on things such as physical appearance.  The major issues that girls encounter are anorexia, bulimia, alcohol, drugs and sex.  In the path for peer approval, most adolescents loose sight of who they are as well as who they used to consider as friends.  Most girls, as Piper explains, have a hard time keeping a friendly relationship with boys as they did before adolescents.  Pipher claims that “while peers can be satisfying and growth producing, they can also be growth destroying” (Pipher 68).  She talks about how girls who are attentive to social pressure, who form obsessions about their weight, some girls revert to drinking and doing drugs to feel that they belong to a group, while others are pressured into engaging in sexual activity.  Pollack on the other hand, states that boys are underestimated in terms of the intensity on the same pressures that girls are faced with.  He claims that boys are shaped more by their peers than by their own individuality.  To avoid being rejected by their peers, Pollack suggests, boys tend to disguise their emotions and express a “hardened” exterior, portraying themselves as a tough, masculine character.  In a sense both authors describe adolescents being voiceless to their genuine selves in order to fit into their characteristic roles as influenced by their peers.    

The confusion of how adolescents should behave and how they want to behave pushes them into confusion.  This frustration, as Pipher and Pollack refer to, causes a strain with their normal routines at home.   Both genders are pushed to separate from their family and to be independent at an age that they are most vulnerable.  Pipher and Pollack mention how these young adults feel that they have to be distant from the people they love in order to fit into the external environment in which they are surrounded majority of their days.  For them they feel that this is another step to expressing independence and engage in the world as an adult, when it is the most crucial time in their lives to have support from their family.  Pipher claims that the distance that girls start to initiate in is due a number of factors, each brought up by the forces they face in culture.  Pollack on the other hand, states that one of the reasons that adolescent boys distance themselves is due to the pressures that they face in society as well as ones with their families.  One of the primary reasons to the distance, as Pollack states, is due to the “gender straitjacket that they are overcome by in society as well as at home” (Pollack 61).  Both authors suggest that a loving home and a positive family relationship is something that helps adolescents cope with the strains that they encounter, even though they might seem that they do not want to be a part of it. 

Both authors describe the importance of family relationships in adolescents’ lives.  Pipher makes it a point to describe how mother-daughter relationships are important in adolescent girls’ lives, just as Pollack suggests that a father’s support has a huge impact in adolescent boy’s lives.  Even through her experience of being a mother and seeing a bundle of patients, Pipher claims “I was struck, as I often am, by how closely daughters observe their mothers and by how strongly they feel about their mothers behaviors” (Pipher 171).   

Like Mary Pipher in her book, Reviving Ophelia, William Pollack in his book, Real Boys, describes the troubles that adolescents face in everyday life.  They explore the various issues that these adolescents come across at school, with media, society, with their peers, and situations encountered with family.  Both authors interpret situations from patients and research from which they have observed.  They use this in order to make sense of what the newer generation of adolescents is experiencing and also to try to break the views that the media and society have on these young adults.  In some cases both authors share similar views and in other cases, the authors seem to take different approaches to situations.  While Pollack discusses the “Boy Code” that he claims is a major issue that adolescent boys face, Pipher uses Ophelia, a character from a Shakespearean play, as a symbolic figure to describe the troubles that adolescent girls encounter. 

Society seems to be one of the biggest issues that Pipher and Pollack both state puts pressure on these children.  The media depicts how an individual should look and how they should act.  For girls, Pipher claims that the media influences them to be thin and compliant to what others want and society further pushes these girls to fit these views.   Similarly, Pollack claims that the media also has a negative impact on the image of adolescent boys.  The media portrays these boys to have an aggressive, masculine exterior and society adds to this image by disapproving any expression of feelings. 

Pipher describes how television, magazines, the radio, and practically any sort of exposure including school seems to contribute to an image that these adolescents have, that they feel that they should fit into.  Pollack describes this image as the “Boy Code”, for adolescent boys.  He uses this to illustrate the strain that this code puts on these boys.  The code represents an image that these boys are forced to follow of face the consequences of being an outcast from society.  Although Pipher does not explicitly categorize an image of a girl into a code, she does take a similar approach to describing the image that girls are influenced to be in order to fit into society’s views.  In her approach, she uses a symbolic figure to describe how troubled and voiceless adolescent girl feel in the face of peer pressure, society and the media.  Pipher and Pollack describe the limits that girls and boys are limited to.  Adolescent boys are suppose to mask their feelings, show masculinity, “be tough should demand respect from others” and also should not display characteristics that adolescent girls are imagined to portray, such as showing any type of emotion.  Adolescent girls are expected to be a thin, seductive character that ends up being the very thing that endangers their physical and mental wellbeing.  These views, as Pipher and Pollack claim, contribute to decreases in self-esteem and continue pushing adolescent into a confusing bind that leads some of them to serious states of depression.   

Peer pressure is another aspect that Pipher and Pollack discuss contributes to the strain that girls and boys face through adolescents.  Through her many cases, Pipher finds that most adolescent girls find the need to compare and compete with their peers on things such as physical appearance.  The major issues that girls encounter are anorexia, bulimia, alcohol, drugs and sex.  The friends that these adolescents grew up with and considered some of their closest friend change.  Most girls, as Piper explains, have a hard time keeping a friendly relationship with boys as they did before adolescents.  Pipher claims that “while peers can be satisfying and growth producing, they can also be growth destroying” (Pipher 68).  She talks about how girls who are attentive to social pressure, who form obsessions about their weight, some girls revert to drinking and doing drugs to feel that they belong to a group, while others are pressured into engaging in sexual activity.  Pollack on the other hand, states that boys are underestimated in terms of the intensity on the same pressures that girls are faced with.  He claims that boys are shaped more by their peers than by their own individuality.  To avoid being rejected by their peers, Pollack suggests, boys tend to disguise their emotions and express a “hardened” exterior, portraying themselves as a tough, masculine character.  In a sense both authors describe adolescents being voiceless to their genuine selves in order to fit into their characteristic roles as influenced by their peers.    

The confusion of how adolescents should behave and how they want to behave pushes them into confusion.  This frustration, as Pipher and Pollack refer to, causes a strain with their normal routines at home.   Both genders are pushed to separate from their family and to be independent at an age that they are most vulnerable.  Pipher and Pollack mention how these young adults feel that they have to be distant from the people they love in order to fit into the external environment in which they are surrounded majority of their days.  For them they feel that this is another step to expressing independence and engage in the world as an adult, when it is the most crucial time in their lives to have support from their family.  Pipher claims that the distance that girls start to initiate in is due a number of factors, each brought up by the forces they face in culture.  Pollack on the other hand, states that one of the reasons that adolescent boys distance themselves is due to the pressures that they face in society as well as ones with their families.  One of the primary reasons to the distance, as Pollack states, is due to the “gender straitjacket that they are overcome by in society as well as at home” (Pollack 61).  Both authors suggest that a loving home and a positive family relationship is something that helps adolescents cope with the strains that they encounter, even though they might seem that they do not want to be a part of it. 

References

Pipher, Mary. Reviving Ophelia. New York: Ballantine Books , 1994.

Pollack, William. Real Boys. New York: Henry Holt, 1999.

In their edited play, ”My Name is Rachel Corrie”, Katharine Viner and Alan Rickman use the journal and email’s of Rachel Corrie to describe particular events that took place and led up to the death of Rachel Corrie.   It deals with issues that a young girl questions throughout the period of her life and expresses her developing personality as well as her changes in the view of life.  The play begins by describing the goals and questions that she plans on exploring by breaking away from her sheltered life in a small community in Olympia, Washington.  Growing up in this community, she describes herself as an individual that has a different perspective on things than that of others in her school as well as community.   Her passion allows her to break free from the normal occupation that would lead to a prestigious career and directs her to become an artist and a writer.  Her zeal guides her to travel to Palestine as an activist in the International Solidarity Movement to try to make a difference in the lives of others.  Through her visit to residential areas in Palestine, she reflects back to certain parts of her life in Olympia, Washington which reflects a picture of how her experience has led her from being a naive young girl to a thoughtful responsive adult.  In her visit to Gaza among other residential areas in Palestine, she bonds with residents who shelter her.  Through this she finds that the people that she comes across are merely innocent people who through the destruction of their homes and food supply, still choose to maintain hope and live their lives the best that they can manage.  On her trip, as a member of the International Solidarity Movement, she organizes various rallies and speeches to reach out to others to highlight the chaos in Palestine.  One day, while trying to save a home from being demolished of one of the families that sheltered her, her fight is brought to an end.  Similar to what she had dreamt in her dreams, she was run over by a bulldozer, crushing her and leading her to her last act as an activist, daughter, sister, student, and a courageous young lady.

                This passionate play has a collective approach in describing a young lady’s thoughts and actions from adolescence through the period of her life.  The use of her actual writings and exert from her journal seem to add a more realistic view to the play.  It not only allows the audience to see Rachel Corrie’s perspective on issues, but it also gives the audience the perspective of other people, like her mother and father, a response to her perspective.  The emails to and from her parent really seem to put things that she had been describing in her journal as well as add her true feelings and pieces of the active movement in a manner that allows the audience to get an idea of the events taking place in the play.  Then the audience is also presented to her mothers growing enthusiasm on learning more about the issues taking place as well as her father’s changing views.   Another aspect of that the emails to her parents showed was her changing attitude.  She goes to Palestine with a courageous attitude and after about two weeks is realizes the dangerous environment that she has come to. Her emails also showed how attached she became to helping the residents of Palestine and how, even though she really wanted to go back to Olympia, Washington, she felt guilty that those people could not leave and come back in the same manner that she was able to do.  This not only showed how dedicated she was to the causes that she took part in but also how she was determined to make a difference and was not going to leave without doing so.

                The play has an excellent depiction of the character of Rachel Corrie.  Being in Palestine, she realizes how much freedom she had and how she pictured herself as not fitting into her community in Olympia, Washington.  This is the opposite of the residents in Palestine; these residents were trying to keep their community, but were unable to do so.  Through her emails to her mother and father she mentioned how she felt bad about leaving, although she did miss her home.  This makes it seem as though she felt that she has taken advantage of what she had growing up and was punishing herself for not appreciating it.  

One of the strengths of the play is how it forms relationships with situations that take place in America and compare them to Palestine, catching the readers’ attention and portraying the difference between them.  By mentioning the chaos, destruction and loss that America suffered on September eleventh, she gives the audience an image and then uses this to describe the destruction going on on a daily basis in the environment that the residents of Palestine have to live in.

                Another compelling aspect of the play is how the play is brought together from her dreams to her fate.  In a journal entry she mentioned that she dreamed of dying by “falling into to my death of something dusty and smooth and crumbling like the cliffs in Utah”.  It almost seemed unreal that she dreamed of dying in a way that so similarly led to her death before she even went to prevent the destruction of the Gaza homes.  This aspect of her journal not only bought an incredible scrutiny to the play, but also brought irony. What seemed to be a dream became reality.

                However, one of the plays major weaknesses was the de-emphasis on historical context.  The play sort of jumped into Rachel Corrie going to Palestine as an activist, and described bits and pieces of the hostilities going on between Israelis and Palestine.  It was rather difficult to put the pieces from her journal on what the conflict was about, with no prior knowledge of the situation.  Although this was a weakness, it was also a strength for the sake of Rachel Corrie’s views on the conflict.  Since the audience sees the destruction that the Israel Defense Forces are implementing on the residents of Palestine, they are almost forced to take the side of the residents of Palestine and disregard any acclimations that Israel may have toward the conflict.  Even though there is not likely to be a valid explanation to all of the destruction and death that the Israel forces were implementing on the residents of Palestine, the idea that only one side of the conflict gets described with little information on the conflict as a whole, adds to the heroism to the character of Rachel Corrie. 

                Altogether, the play does an excellent job on giving an outlook on the characteristics of Rachel Corrie.  The use of metaphor describes the details that shows her personality and views in life.  By including the list of heroes, past relationships, as well as the other activities she participated in shows how she engaged in the world and was an individual who loved to discover and learn new things through her many experiences before and after leaving her  sheltered community.  Unlike some of the cases that Piper mentioned in Reviving Ophelia, Rachel Corrie shows a collective individual who freely expresses her thoughts and views regardless of the opinions of others including her fathers.  By becoming a member of the International Solidarity Movement and going to another country as an activist, she challenges her fathers’ neo-liberal view and gets him to see the major conflicts going on there.  She is depicted as an altruistic individual who is open to exploring and learning as well as a courageous young girl standing up for what she believes in and does so to the last day of her life.