I'm not quite sure how I feel about Eric Konigsberg's article in the most recent New Yorker about the suicide of a gifted teenager in Nebraska (unfortunately it's not online, so I can't link). Actually, I do know how I feel: uncomfortable. Only I'm not quite sure why.
It's a sad story, of course: how can the suicide of a teenager not be? But I think my discomfort lies less with the content of the article than with its style, perhaps, more specifically, with its rhetorical tone and structure.
The article begins with the devastated parents, baffled by their son's suicide. Then it provides backstory on the parents and narrates the boy's early childhood. After describing how a psychologist scored his IQ at 178, it takes a detour into the psychologist's problematic history with gifted children, including her tendency to score kids higher than other psychologists.
So now we're primed to be skeptical as we return to the boy's upbringing. The article seems like straight narration, but as it describes the parents' involvement in their son's life, their active participation in the "gifted circuit," and the mother's insistence on self-publishing her mystery novels, it seems clear that Konigsberg wants us to see them as a problem, even though he's not willing to come out and say it--and that, I think, is at the heart of my discomfort, I realize as I am writing this. You could argue that the writing is subtle, but you could also argue that it is manipulative, and even cruel.
The piece ends with diverging opinions about the boy's suicide: his friends and sisters think he was depressed; his psychologist and parents think he was an indigo child who had completed his work on earth and is now operating in the afterlife. A friend has emails for evidence; the psychologist's husband has the boy's word, for he continues to talk to him. Konigsberg does not take a position, at least overtly.
A friend of mine suggested that the article is about how we try to make meaning out of the terrible. I don't know. Keeping in mind that the piece appears in The New Yorker, it's pretty clear who we are supposed to align ourselves with: the rationalists in California, not the iconoclasts in Nebraska. Though Konigsberg begins in apparent sympathy for the parents' loss, I would argue that ultimately he sets them up, displaying them as deluded specimens for the New Yorker audience that knows better.
And is it really worth it to do that with someone's life, even for a New Yorker clip?
[I never heard the term indigo child until I read this article, but there it was in the New York Times on Thursday, and then last night at the video store I saw this--clearly some kind of confluence, at least for me.]
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3 comments:
yes, this is just how I felt about this article! I kept reading, but it made me angry because the parents were coming off so so weird, and yet clearly they have found something that lets them make meaning out of the terrible...oh, it was all just so sad. (There, how's that for an informed academic opinion?)
I found the article to be exploitive but also constuctive. Exploitive for all the obvious reasons, but I also think the story warns of the perils of making your child something they may not be. The article hinted that Brandonn (was that his name?) was coming to believe that he may not be as smart as his parents had told him. And, I think that he may have been afraid of being revealed as a fraud. Additionally, it is pretty universal that parents can be in denial of their children's emotional lives. Their refusal to see him as clinically depressed was extreme. Killing himself to help others through organ donation? But, this is not because they are hicks, it is because they have crafted a story of their child in their heads. I know plenty of people are not honest with themselves about the people their children are.
I was certainly a sad article, but the family began this exploitation by taking him onto talk shows. I think that the article in the end does more than paint a freakshow.
Best!
Margaret
I was someone quoted in the article. Yes, I agree most of the parents came off strange. But truthfully, he(the writer) didnt talk about the kids who are doing healing work and are wise beyond anything that has been seen before. John went with the whole ADD thing and so of course it was going to seem like these parents are trying to make their children seem "special",
The children I see in my practice have gifts beyond (as I said anything I have come across.) Many of these children are more sensitive to chemicals and also may have allergies leading to behavioral problems. he failed to focus on the spirituality, instead he focused on this as a "style". I know my quote was out of context to what I said and I can only imagine many of the others were to.
The way these children will help is by teaching compassion and spirituality in a way their parents are unable- My boyfriend was interviewed as he is a 27 year old indigo. He told the reporter he hates labels..doesnt like the term indigo and felt the parents need the help not the kids. Of course John failed to put this quote in by a level headed compassionate and truly spiritual man who can see past all the b.s and see whats really important. ALl the best to you all, Julia
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