"American Man at Age Ten" reading response

It seems the point the author is trying to make in the essay titled “The American Man At Age Ten” is that ten year old males or boys, as I call them, are in a pivotal moment in their lives. They are teetering on the border between being a kid and a young adult. They are still silly and have wild imaginations and somewhat unrealistic dreams but they are also starting recognize the outside world and everything that comes with it. They are taking real life scenarios and sometimes putting a child's spin on it. For example, in the writing, the main character, Colin, wants to buy a ranch in Wyoming and the author muses that listening to him talk about his future ranch “Sometimes...sounds as ordinary and hard-boiled as a real estate appraisal” but “Other times it can sound fantastical and wifty and achingly naïve informed by the last inklings of childhood..” The writer then goes on to say that Colin is kind of an interesting mess and in that mess of a human being specifically states the point of the essay when she says “The mess often has the form of what he will probably think like when he is a grown man, but the content of what he is like as a little boy” Yet another example is when the author asks Colin what “the biggest advantage of adulthood would be”. Colin told her that it was that “grown-ups can go where ever they want” and when she asked him to explain he answered “Well, if your a grown-up, you'd have a car and whenever you felt like it, you could get into your car and drive somewhere and get candy” So he obviously understood the aspect of owning a car and being able to drive it where ever we need to go but childishly indicated that should he have that kind of freedom he'd use it to get candy.

In terms of my English 102 class the essay fits very well into the curriculum. For one, the author had to go and observe a culture that she was not a part of and so she chose ten year old boys. She also had to interview someone, although unlike the one time-several minute interviews we will be doing, she continually interviewed Colin for several days to get the answers she wanted. Personally I really liked this essay. The author, I think, does a very good job describing a ten year old. I believe she really tried to get into their heads and see what they thought about and how they thought about it. I would like to be as descriptive as she is throughout all her writing from the way she describes the way Colin looks to what he and his friend think of girls. She does a wonderful job at painting a picture of a ten year old American man.