Signpost on the Journey essay

In-Class Essay: Signpost on the Journey Lots of teenagers have their own opinions of life. Their opinions often change throughout time. In many parents' opinions, teenagers sometimes behave like the strangest creatures in the world. In "Signposts on the Journey", the father used his son as an example and characterized all the teenagers in general. The father, Steve Buist's characterizations of teenagers ate fair because he is telling his opinions based on his own experience, but it's also unfair because he cannot define every teenager and he even doesn't know everything about his son. Steve Buist's characterizations of teenagers are partly fair. This father is looking at his own son as an example. In the anecdote, when the father was taking his son to work, "[he] had forgotten how tall [his] son has become but, of course, [they] rarely see [their son] up right"(p.288). It proved that the necessities for his son was really like what Steve Buist said, " a reliable TV converter, a comfortable couch, the need to remain horizontal (and motionless) on said couch for hours at a time, and the need to practise driving the car as much as possible"(p.288). Steve Buist had been watching his son every day, so he was using his own experience to characterize teenagers. When the father found out his son was protecting a little kid from bullying, he realized his son was doing right things. He said, "[he] learnt that [his son] was making the right choices. And [he] couldn't be prouder"(p.290). It showed that the father was not stereotyping his son. He could also see the good sides of his son, so Steve Buist was not characterizing teenagers only from bad sides. It supports that his characterizations are fair and they are based on his own experience. Steve Buist's...