Reflections on Teenagers and Their Thirst for Significance in THE CASUAL VACANCY by J. K. Rowling - Part 4

SPOILER ALERT

This is my fourth and final post with reflections on teenagers and their thirst for signficance in THE CASUAL VACANCY, J. K. Rowling's first novel since her Harry Potter series. This novel for adults is set in the fictional rural English town of Pagford. A "casual vacancy" on the Pagford Parish Council has resulted from the sudden death of council member Barry Fairbrother, due to an aneurysm. The process of filling the vacant council seat reveals the dark underbelly of the seemingly idyllic town of Pagford.

This post continues and concludes my reflections on a prominent theme in the novel: teenagers and their thirst for significance during that in-between time when one is no longer a child but not yet an adult. This theme shows up in the dis-empowering treatment of teenagers in Pagford, in teens' attention to autonomous thoughts, in their striving for authenticity, in the importance they accord to secret places, in smoking behavior, in sexual behavior, in bullying behavior, in the practice of self-cutting, in the ability to act significantly but anonymously afforded by the Internet, in sports, in family aspirations, in possessing valuable objects, and in suicide.

My previous three posts reflect on dis-empowerment, autonomous thoughts, authenticity, secret places, smoking, sexual behavior, bullying, cutting, and Internet anonymity. This post will reflect on sports, family aspirations, valuable objects, and suicide.

KRYSTAL WEEDON. In this post, we turn our attention to a teenager in THE CASUAL VACANCY whom I haven't yet mentioned in my posts on teens' thirst for significance in Rowling's novel. This is sixteen-year-old Krystal Weedon, a classmate of Andrew Price, Fats Wall, and Sukhvinder Jawanda, a resident of the Fields, and one of the "undeserving" poor. Krystal certainly has a troubled background. She is the third child of Terri Weedon, who is a drug addict and a prostitute. Krystal doesn't know her elder brother and sister, both of whom were removed from the home by social workers and were raised by others. Krystal lives with her mother, Terri, and her four-year-old brother, Robbie. I would characterize Krystal as a young girl with a good heart, an abrasive manner, and a tendency to act on impulse. She is struggling against great odds to keep her mother off drugs and their family of three intact. She also has a rough and sassy attitude, street smarts, and heightened sexual energy.

SPORTS. One way that Krystal reaches for significance is through sports. Krystal is a member of her school's rowing team. The team was formed by Barry Fairbrother, the recently deceased Pagford Parish Council member. Barry grew up in the poor Fields area and succeeded in moving into the solid middle class of Pagford. He has a heart for residents of the Fields and a desire to encourage Krystal Weedon. He took it upon himself to volunteer to form and coach a girl's rowing team at the high school, and he quickly singled out Krystal as a girl with natural strength, coordination, and rowing ability. Krystal became a valuable member of the rowing team, a positive and productive way of being significant. Her team members were inspired by her skill and her confidence in competition.

FAMILY ASPIRATIONS. Here is a beautiful thing about Krystal. She dreams of emulating her great grand-mother, Nana Cath (Catherine Weedon), who, until her death, provides a safe place where Krystal can retreat when she needs to. Nana Cath is protective and loving, yet also stern and forbidding at times. Krystal dreams of having a child - in fact, she has sex with Fats Wall in the hope of becoming pregnant, knowing that Fats' parents would help her out if she were having their grand-child. She imagines herself in a home that Fats' parents would help to provide for her, a home that would also be a haven for her four-year-old brother, Robbie. Here is what J. K. Rowling says about Krystal Weedon's family aspirations on page 328.

[In having sex with Fats, what Krystal] wanted was the baby: the baby was more than a means to an end. She liked babies; she had always loved Robbie. She would keep the two of them safe, together; she would be like a better, kinder, younger Nana Cath to her family.

This dream is never fulfilled, but it shows a very generous side of a young girl who is often looked down upon because of her "unsavory" family background. The one bright spot in Krystal's family, along with her brother Robbie, is Nana Cath, and this is how Krystal dreams of being significant - by loving and protecting her family as she has seen Nana Cath do, and even by improving upon what she has seen in Nana Cath's methods: "she would be a better, kinder, younger Nana Cath to her family" (page 328).

Krystal aspires to take the few positive elements of her family life and build her own life upon them. We can question her method of getting pregnant by Fats Wall so as to have Colin and Tessa Wall's grand-child and hence their help, but for a teenager with very few life options, it is a generous plan, one in which Krystal seeks significance through what she can give to her family.

POSSESSING SPECIAL OBJECTS. This way of feeling significant is not surprising for Krystal Weedon, who has had so little of her own in life. Krystal likes to take things that don't belong to her, preferably things that belong to people who are significant in Krystal's life. One interesting instance of this is the wrist-watch belonging to Tessa Wall, who is Krystal's guidance counselor at school and whose grand-child Krystal would like to have. It is interesting to trace the path of Tessa's watch through the novel after Krystal takes it.

I confess that I have felt contemptuous of kleptomaniacs. I can sort of understand shop-lifting, since one doesn't have a personal relationship with the store owner, and indeed, the store may be a large chain store. I can see that a person might shop-lift without feeling that they were harming anyone in any way. But to take something that belongs to a friend or an acquaintance - surely anyone would know that this is wrong.

J. K. Rowling's character Krystal Weedon, however, gives me a different perspective on this. Krystal takes things from people she admires without really understanding why she does it. But given the harsh realities of Krystal's life, I think I can see the reason. Perhaps having something from an admired person means a deeper connection with that person and with that person's significance. In having Tessa Wall's wrist-watch, Krystal may feel a closer connection with Tessa. Perhaps, also, in Krystal's sub-conscious mind, some of Tessa's significance is transferred to Krystal through this object. I think that there is a way to understand what looks like theft as a yearning for a deeper connection with an admired person and as a yearning for one's own significance.

SUICIDE. At the end of the novel, Krystal Weedon commits suicide. She does this right after learning of her four-year-old brother Robbie's death, for which she blames herself. While Krystal was having sex by the river with Fats Wall in an attempt to become pregnant and thus receive the Walls' help in obtaining a home for herself, her baby-to-be, and Robbie -- Robbie, who was supposed to be in Krystal's care, fell into the river and drowned. On learning this, Krystal rushes home, barricades herself in the bathroom, and injects herself with enough of her mother's heroin to kill herself. On page 480, Rowling explains, "Robbie was dead, and it was her fault. In trying to save him, she had killed him." Then on page 481, Rowling says, "Krystal Weedon had achieved her only ambition: she had joined her brother where nobody could part them."

Krystal Weedon was a generous and capable girl who could have grown into a strong and kind-hearted woman with much to give to the world. Because Krystal's home life was so abysmal, she needed a mentor, such as she had in Barry Fairbrother, until he died.

So much was stacked against Krystal, and in the end, she didn't make it. Here was one more loss - the loss of her precious little brother, Robbie - piled upon the very recent loss of her mentor, Barry Fairbrother, and of her protective great grand-mother, Nana Cath. Krystal's impulsiveness took over, probably coupled with overwhelming grief piled upon grief, and the resultant despair.

This world had become impossible for Krystal - or at least, it seemed that way to her. The people who had given significance to Krystal's life were no longer in this world. So Krystal reached out into the spirit world, where she could join Robbie - and Nana Cath and Mr. Fairbrother - the people who had given her life its meaning.

My next post will turn from the teenagers in THE CASUAL VACANCY to reflections upon the adults.

Reflections on Teenagers and Their Thirst for Significance in THE CASUAL VACANCY by J. K. Rowling - Part 3

SPOILER ALERT

This is my third post with reflections on teenagers and their thirst for signficance in THE CASUAL VACANCY, J. K. Rowling's first novel since her Harry Potter series. This novel for adults is set in the fictional rural English town of Pagford. A "casual vacancy" on the Pagford Parish Council has resulted from the sudden death of council member Barry Fairbrother, due to an aneurysm. The process of filling the vacant council seat reveals the dark underbelly of the seemingly idyllic town of Pagford.

This post continues my reflections on a prominent theme in the novel: teenagers and their thirst for significance during that in-between time when one is no longer a child but not yet an adult. This theme shows up in the dis-empowering treatment of teenagers in Pagford, in teens' attention to autonomous thoughts, in their striving for authenticity, in the importance they accord to secret places, in smoking behavior, in sexual behavior, in bullying behavior, in the practice of self-cutting, in the ability to act significantly but anonymously afforded by the Internet, in possessing valuable objects, in sports, in family aspirations, and in suicide.

My previous two posts reflect on dis-empowerment, autonomous thoughts, authenticity, secret places, smoking, sexual behavior, bullying, and cutting. This post will reflect on Internet anonymity.

INTERNET ANONYMITY. Rowling's novel shows how a savvy Internet user can post on the Internet with complete anonymity. In THE CASUAL VACANCY, teenager Andrew Price does exactly this. A substitute teacher has recently told Andrew's computer class about SQL injections, which allow one to hack into a website that doesn't have proper security. At an Internet café, Andrew uses an SQL injection to hack into the Pagford Parish Council website. Since the site is administered by a very amateur computer user who has not set up even minimal security against hacking, Andrew is successful on his first try. A post by the recently deceased council member, Barry Fairbrother, allows Andrew to access the dead man's username and password and to post a comment himself after changing the username to The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother.

Andrew has composed a post about his father, Simon Price, who has decided to run for Barry Fairbrother's now vacant Pagford Parish Council seat. Simon is very abusive to his family, and Andrew has been swallowing bucketsful of anger throughout his life as he, his mother, and his brother have endured the terror of Simon's rages. Andrew also knows that Simon possesses a stolen computer and has earned under-the-table money by using the printers at his place of employment to do illicit printing jobs. Andrew reveals Simon's dishonesy in a comment on the Pagford Parish Council website titled "Simon Price Unfit to Stand for Council" by The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother. Although Andrew's best friend, Stuart "Fats" Wall, is with Andrew and sees what he has done, Fats remains silent and no one ever discovers that Andrew is the person behind that damaging post.

Later, teenager Sukhvinder Jawanda, daughter of Pagford Parish Council member Parminder Jawanda, uses the same method to express anger at her mother. Sukhvinder, too, heard the lecture on SQL injections from the substitute teacher in the computer class, and manages to hack into the Pagford Parish Council website, compose a damaging post about her mother, and attribute it to The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother. Like Andrew Price, Sukhvinder Jawanda remains permanently anonymous. No one ever identifies her as the author of that post.

Next, Fats Wall composes a damaging post about his father, also a contender for the vacant Pagford Parish Council seat, and finally, Andrew Price composes a final post about an extra-marital affair of council member Howard Mollison.

In the end, Fats, due to an unusual set of circumstances, confesses to having authored all four posts by The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother. Otherwise, one assumes, no author of these posts would ever have been discovered. (Indeed, with Fats taking responsibility for all four posts, the involvement of Andrew Price and of Sukhvinder Jawanda never is discovered.)

The temptation to post anonymously on the Internet can be very strong. In New Orleans, we have the case of Sal Perricone, assistant attorney to U. S. prosecutor Jim Letten, who has been revealed as the composer of Internet comments on federal cases being prosecuted by Letten and Perricone. Perricone posted under the username of Henry L. Mencken1951. As a member of the prosecuting team, Perricone is forbidden to comment on cases being prosecuted, but that didn't prevent him from giving in to the strong temptation to post anonymous comments. Clearly, he wasn't as careful as the teenagers in Rowling's THE CASUAL VACANCY, for Perricone's anonymous comments were traced to him, forcing his resignation.

It now also appears that Jan Mann, another member of Jim Letten's team, has posted similar comments under the username eweman. Tellingly, the comments of eweman stopped just as soon as Sal Perricone was revealed as Henry L. Mencken1951.

I suppose it could be exhilarating to see one's comments in print, hear people discussing them, and continue on as a member of the federal prosecuting team. One would feel very powerful, perhaps even invincible.

I don't know why Sal Perricone and Jan Mann needed to experience this kind of exhilaration, but I can see how it would be intoxicating for teenagers. Teenagers don't have much say-so about their lives. To cause something significant to happen, to know that you caused something significant to happen, to hear people discussing what you have caused and searching for the perpetrator, and just to watch silently what you have set in motion while no one suspects that it was you - this would give teenagers a heady sense of power.

My next post will conclude my reflections on teenagers and their thirst for significance in THE CASUAL VACANCY, focusing on valuable objects, sports, family aspirations, and suicide.

Reflections on Teenagers and Their Thirst for Significance in THE CASUAL VACANCY by J. K. Rowling - Part 2

SPOILER ALERT

This post continues my reflections on teenagers and their thirst for signficance in THE CASUAL VACANCY, J. K. Rowling's first novel since her Harry Potter series. This novel for adults is set in the fictional rural English town of Pagford. A "casual vacancy" on the Pagford Parish Council has resulted from the sudden death of council member Barry Fairbrother, due to an aneurysm. The process of filling the vacant council seat reveals the dark underbelly of the seemingly idyllic town of Pagford.

This post will continue my reflections on a prominent theme in the novel: teenagers and their thirst for significance during that in-between time when one is no longer a child but not yet an adult. This theme shows up in the dis-empowering treatment of teenagers in Pagford, in teens' attention to autonomous thoughts, in their striving for authenticity, in the importance they accord to secret places, in smoking behavior, in sexual behavior, in bullying behavior, in the practice of self-cutting, in the ability to act significantly but anonymously afforded by the Internet, in possessing valuable objects, in sports, in family aspirations, and in suicide.

My previous post reflects on dis-empowerment, autonomous thoughts, and authenticity. This post will reflect on secret places, smoking, sexual behavior, bullying, and self-cutting.

SECRET PLACES. Children and teenagers seem to love secret places. Maybe adults do, too. A secret place gives a sense of power. No one else knows where it is. One can be autonomous in one's secret place.

Andrew Price and Fats Wall have a secret place: a cave along the river bank, dangerous to reach. The river bank ends at a hillside, where a very narrow ledge above the rushing river at the bottom of the hill constitutes the only path along the steep hill-face to the cave. One must inch carefully along the ledge, using hand-holds of rocks and crannies in the hill-face until one arrives at the cave's opening. Andrew and Fats are adept at this. They discovered this secret place when they were eleven years old; they are now sixteen. The place is both forbidden and dangerous, increasing its appeal.

A cave that no one else knows about. A secret place of power.

SMOKING. This seems to appeal to many teens, including many Pagford teenagers. This is most unfortunate because smoking is so disastrous for one's health.

SEXUAL BEHAVIOR. Naturally, Pagford teens want to experiment with sex, and do. It's hard to know what a healthy approach to sexual behavior for teens might be. I certainly don't claim to know.

BULLYING BEHAVIOR. Bullying is, most unfortunately, alive and well in Pagford. One target is Sukhvinder Jawanda. Sukhvinder is a middle child with a gorgeous brainy elder sister, Jaswant, and a handsome clever younger brother, Rajpal. Both Jaswant and Rajpal are the pride of their Indian parents, Parminder (the mother) and Vikram (the father), and both are popular among their school mates. Sukhvinder feels awkward and dumb as she endures the scolding of her mother and the bullying of Fats Wall. Fats whispers remarks in Sukhvinder's presence and posts remarks on her Facebook page that question Sukhvinder's sexuality. The remarks liken Sukhvinder to a hermaphrodite, a lesbian, a girl-child covered with hair.

This is a terrible way to feel powerful and "significant" at another's expense. "Here is something significant I can do. I can cause another to feel deep pain. See how significant I am - I can hurt someone else." Terrible as this is, people choose this way to feel significant.

Even more, I believe that people choose this way to feel powerful when they already have power. Sometimes the most popular kids in the school are the ones who do the bullying. These kids are popular, they have power - and they love it. They want more. Bullying gives them more. To hurt someone else, to cause deep pain, to be powerful enough to hurt someone significantly - this can produce quite a rush. And there are people who choose that rush of power they feel when bullying.

SELF-CUTTING. Sukhvinder, the target of Fats Wall's bullying, cuts herself. This is a way of replacing deep emotional pain with physical pain. The physical pain overwhelms the self-cutter so that the emotional pain is blocked out. I can understand this intellectually, but it is not something I can imagine myself doing. I certainly don't enjoy emotional pain, but neither do I wish to experience physical pain. My solution is generally to engage in an activity I enjoy so that the enjoyment takes over. Since childhood, I have done this with reading - losing myself in the world of story.

For Sukhvinder, though, self-cutting is a life-line. On page 147, J. K. Rowling says, "[Sukhvinder] clung to the prospect of her only consolation, as she would have hugged a life belt, waiting, waiting, for them all to go to bed." What this young girl was anticipating so eagerly was the opportunity to cut herself with a razor blade. On page 149, Rowling describes the cutting: "With a slight shiver of fear that was a blessed relief in its narrow, immediate focus, [Sukhvinder] placed the blade halfway up her forearm and sliced into her own flesh." Later on page 149, Rowling explains, "The blade drew the pain away from her screaming thoughts and transmuted it into animal burning of nerves and skin: relief and release in every cut."

How much emotional pain one must be in to feel such immense relief when the emotional pain is overwhelmed by the physical pain. To think that one would actually welcome physical pain, actually inflict it on oneself by cutting one's flesh, so as to be briefly free of emotional pain.

The amount of pain in the world, even within one human being, is vast. Just the possibility that a child of mine might experience such intense emotional pain as to want to relieve it by self-cutting makes me so grateful that I have never brought a child into this world, where such pain is possible.

My next post will continue with reflections on the anonymity afforded by the Internet and how this is used by teens in THE CASUAL VACANCY.

Reflections on Teenagers and Their Thirst for Significance in THE CASUAL VACANCY by J. K. Rowling - Part 1

SPOILER ALERT

THE CASUAL VACANCY is J. K. Rowling's first novel since her Harry Potter series. It is a novel for adults. The novel is set in the fictional rural English town of Pagford. A "casual vacancy" on the Pagford Parish Council has resulted from the sudden death of council member Barry Fairbrother, due to an aneurysm. The process of filling the vacant council seat reveals the dark underbelly of the seemingly idyllic town of Pagford.

My previous post gave an overview of THE CASUAL VACANCY. This post will begin to offer reflections about a prominent theme in the novel: teenagers and their thirst for significance during that in-between time when one is no longer a child but not yet an adult.

This theme shows up in the dis-empowering treatment of teenagers in Pagford, in teens' attention to autonomous thoughts, in their striving for authenticity, in the importance they accord to secret places, in smoking behavior, in sexual behavior, in bullying behavior, in the practice of self-cutting, in the ability to act significantly but anonymously afforded by the Internet, in possessing valuable objects, in sports, in family aspirations, and in suicide.

This post will discuss dis-empowerment, autonomous thoughts, and authenticity.

DIS-EMPOWERING TREATMENT. Teenagers in Pagford are dis-empowered, but no more so than are teenagers anywhere else. To my mind, teens need graduated opportunities to shoulder more and more responsibility under the guidance of mentoring adults, who extend more and more autonomy to the teens as they show themselves capable and mature. With appropriate guidance, teens can take responsible positions in the work place, author books, report for newspapers, undertake scientific research, excel as athletes, initiate projects that address community needs, produce plays and films, and so much more. This doesn't happen in Pagford, nor does it happen in many communities. Teens are forced through a school curriculum that appears meaningless to them, and they find no meaningful outlets for their energy and creativity. Feelings of anger and alienation build up and eventually burst forth in ways that can be quite destructive.

ATTENTION TO AUTONOMOUS THOUGHTS. Andrew Price is a teen who uses his own hidden thought-life to counter the dis-empowerment he faces in the larger world. Andrew's father, Simon, is very abusive to his two sons, Andrew (about age 16) and Paul (about age 12). Simon belittles his sons, calls them names, and beats them at will. Their mother, Ruth, also suffers abuse at Simon's hands; unfortunately, she refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the abuse, makes excuses for Simon, and tries ineffectually to placate her husband when he rages. The family lives in constant fear of Simon, never knowing when he will strike. As is the case in most dysfunctional families, Simon's wife and sons never speak of the terror that reigns in their home or of Simon's rageful behavior. Andrew is silent about all this even with his best friend, Stuart "Fats" Wall.

Andrew correctly deems it unsafe to confront his father outwardly, so he endures Simon's abuse in silence. But inwardly, he constantly tells Simon what he thinks of him. No one can read or censure Andrew's thoughts; he is completely free to think at Simon with impunity. And this is what Andrew does.

We see this in our first encounter with the Price family, when Simon learns about Barry Fairbrother's death due to an aneurysm and about the resultant casual vacancy on the Pagford Parish Council. Here is part of the scene, with Andrew's unspoken thoughts, on page 13.

     "He'd had a bad headache for a couple of days, apparently," [said Ruth].
     "Ah," said Simon, chewing toast. "And he ignored it?"
     "Oh, yes, he didn't think anything of it."
     Simon swallowed.
     "Goes to show, doesn't it?" he said portentously. "Got to watch yourself."
     That's wise, thought Andrew, with furious contempt; that's profound. So it was Barry Fairbrother's own fault his brain had burst open. You self-satisfied fucker, Andrew told his father, loudly, inside his own head.

I remember engaging, myself, in these sorts of autonomous thoughts with my own father, who was given to rages and abusiveness similar to that of Simon Price. I remember standing silently before my rageful father while thinking my anger at him, and I remember the power of realizing that I was in some way more powerful than he was. My father, in his visible rage, was revealing his emotions for all to see, while I was expressing my emotions covertly in my mind, where no one could see. My father wasn't fooling me at all, but I had the power of fooling him with my outward submissiveness, hiding the inward angry thoughts I was sending at him, thoughts of which I kept him ignorant. I understand Andrew Price and the power and autonomy he surely felt in sending angry thoughts toward his father, who remained ignorant of those thoughts.

STRIVING FOR AUTHENTICITY. Andrew's best friend, Stuart "Fats" Wall, finds a different sort of self-expression. Both Fats' parents work at the school Fats attends - his father, Colin or "Cubby," as deputy headmaster, and his mother, Tessa, as guidance counselor. For Fats, authenticity is very important. Fats absorbs himself in efforts to distinguish his own authentic feelings from his conditioning and to act on his authentic feelings. Here is how Rowling explains Fats' devotion to authenticity on page 74.

The difficult thing, the glorious thing, was to be who you really were, even if that person was cruel or dangerous, particularly if cruel and dangerous. There was courage in not disguising the animal you happened to be. . . . Lately, [Fats] had been experimenting with acting on what he thought were his authentic impulses, and ignoring or suppressing the guilt and fear (inauthentic) that such actions seemed to engender. Undoubtedly, this was becoming easier with practice. He wanted to toughen up inside, to become invulnerable, to be free of the fear of consequences: to rid himself of spurious notions of goodness and badness.

To me, this sounds like a fine way to turn oneself into a sociopath. Actually, I wonder if Fats doesn't have some sociopathic tendencies. As a child in kindergarten, upon hearing that his friend Andrew has a serious peanut allergy, Fats had slipped Andrew a peanut hidden inside a marshmallow just to observe dispassionately what would happen. Fats also seems to enjoy bullying certain other students in his high school class, and even his good friend Andrew becomes uncomfortable with Fats' lack of empathy for fellow teens whom he is hurting. In addition, Fats has sex with a girl his age, having no feelings for her but simply wanting a certain kind of experience. Fats' attitude seems to be that he will act on his "authentic" feelings, no matter what the consequences for himself or others.

Fats also seems to have the idea that authenticity contradicts traditional morality. On page 76, Rowling explains:

What Fats wanted to recover was a kind of innocence, and the route he had chosen back to it was through all the things that were supposed to be bad for you, but which, paradoxically, seemed to Fats to be the one true way to authenticity; to a kind of purity. It was curious how often everything was back to front, the inverse of what they told you; Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth. He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that  lurked within; he wanted to crack open piety and expose bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptized backwards into ignorance and simplicity.

Although Fats' lack of empathy for others is disturbing, his idea that "if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth" (page 76) has some merit. This is the way my sister Maria has proceeded - though, unlike Fats, she has allowed empathy to inform her behavior choices. Maria has often chosen to do the opposite of what our parents, the Catholic Church in which we were raised, and conventional society admonish her to do. She is very much her own person, with unconventional attitudes toward sexuality, money, work, living space, spirituality, and other life matters. As a small example, Maria was raised with the maxim, "Don't talk to strangers"; she has tossed that idea away, makes it a special point to speak to strangers, has a much wider than usual circle of friends and acquaintances, and has befriended a number of homeless people.

Tempered with empathy, the idea that "if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth" (page 76) may work. Fats does not temper this idea with empathy; Maria does. In the end, though, when Fats understands that his "authentic" actions are in some way responsible for the death of a small child and the suicide of a teenager, he is overcome with a guilt that he cannot shake.

I would say that this striving with authenticity, tempered with empathy and including the questioning of previously unquestioned received wisdom, is a good thing at any time in life. I would further say that authenticity takes account of what one feels like doing in the moment and of what one deeply desires to accomplish with one's life. Sometimes these are at odds. One may feel like lashing out in the moment at an irritating person, but one may choose to act from compassion instead because of one's deeper desire to bring more compassion into the world. 

My next post will continue with reflections on the thirst for significance among teenagers in THE CASUAL VACANCY.