Reviews

“The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Jeremiah 31:29

Parenting experts Richard and Linda Eyre recently wrote an insightful series of articles for Meridian on the subject of entitlement, which over half of parents cited as the most disturbing problem with today’s youth. In a survey conducted by the Eyres, parents made the following statements about the attitude of entitlement so prevalent today:

“Kids feel they deserve everything and don’t have to earn anything.”

“It makes them disrespectful.”

“They don’t know how to work.”

“They think they have to have everything their friends have.”

“It’s the reason for all the other problems on the list, they think they can do whatever they want.”

 “Entitlement leads to low motivation.”

The Eyres conclude, “Perhaps the biggest problem with entitlement is that under its illusions, there seem to be no real consequences in life and no motivation to work for anything. Someone will always bail you out, get you off the hook, buy you a new one, make excuses for you, give you another chance, pay your debt, and hand you what you ask for.

(Richard and Linda Eyre, The Biggest Kid-Problem Entitlement.)

It’s Not Just Our Problem

It turns out that a problem with entitlement is not unique to our baby-boom generation. In 1918, Booth Tarkington offered a striking example of the malady in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Magnificent Ambersons. The Ambersons are the reigning family in an Indiana town at the turn of the century, but as the story opens their fortunes begin to change. The son and heir of the family, George Minever, is raised by doting parents and grandparents who spoil and pamper him and satisfy his every whim. As “Georgie” grows into a predictably annoying, selfish young man, the consequences of his upbringing grow more serious. And as the fortune of his parents and grandparents diminishes, their growing inability to cushion his excessive selfishness finally exposes him to the harsh realities of life.

While a distinctly drawn character study, George is a symbol as well, of a pampered, spoiled generation subsisting on the fruits of the former generation’s labor. Aping the aristocratic society in Europe, the rich children of the giants of the industrial revolution scorn honest labor and seek only to enjoy themselves and flaunt their wealth. Into this environment comes the representative of the next great societal wave in the person of Eugene Morgan, suitor to George’s widowed mother and founder of one of the first automobile factories. Inevitably, George clashes with Eugene, even as he falls in love with his daughter, causing the interesting, and often frustrating action of the novel.

Timeless and Timely

The narrative style is very Greek in nature, yet very American as well, as if Oedipus Rex were confronting Horatio Alger! To me that is what makes this novel so intriguing. One feels the sense of the timeless conflict between the son and the rival for his mother’s affections. Yet the novel is also firmly grounded in a certain period in American history, and reflects it so well that we feel a part of it. That combination of the timely and the timeless is a mark of a great work of literature. Here is a taste of Tarkington’s descriptive genius, as he paints for us a quaint picture of an old fashioned street car:

“There were the little bunty street-cars on the long, single track that went its troubled way among the cobble stones. At the rear door of the car there was no platform, but a step where passengers clung in wet clumps when the weather was bad and the car crowded.

“The patrons–if not too absent-minded–put their fares into a slot; and no conductor paced the heaving floor, but the driver would rap remindingly with his elbow upon the glass of the door to his little open platform if the nickels and the passengers did not appear to coincide in number. A lone mule drew the car, and sometimes drew it off the track, when the passengers would get out and push it on again. They really owed it courtesies like this, for the car was genially accommodating: a lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would halt at once and wait for her while she shut the window, put on her hat and cloak, went downstairs, found an umbrella, told the “girl” what to have for dinner, and came forth from the house.

“The previous passengers made little objection to such gallantry on the part of the car: they were wont to expect as much for themselves on like occasion. In good weather the mule pulled the car a mile in a little less than twenty minutes, unless the stops were too long; but when the trolley-car came, doing its mile in five minutes and better, it would wait for nobody. Nor could its passengers have endured such a thing, because the faster they were carried the less time they had to spare! In the days before deathly contrivances hustled them through their lives, and when they had no telephones–another ancient vacancy profoundly responsible for leisure–they had time for everything: time to think, to talk, time to read, time to wait for a lady!” (p. 3)

Though he is not well-known today, in 1922, after winning a second Pulitzer Prize, Tarkington was voted the greatest living American author and one of the ten greatest contemporary Americans. He was pleased with the first vote, yet declared with disarming modesty of the second, You can’t say who are the 10 greatest with any more authority than you can say who are the 10 d—dest fools.’

The next time we are tempted to give a kid the trophy just for showing up, or award the Merit Badges so that everybody in the troop gets to be an Eagle Scout, or pay for the damage because that child didn’t really mean to wreck the car, we might think of spoiled, dangerous Georgie. We don’t do our children any favors when we spoil them; instead we turn them into bitter, envious people who feel that somehow life has not treated them fairly, no matter how much they have. That’s the genius of the word “spoil” to describe what we do to children. We take the consequences of their bad behavior on ourselves in order to spare our children pain, yet by so doing set them up for greater suffering in the end. As the Bible says, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

The Magnificent Ambersons, by Booth Tarkington, is the January selection for the Best Books Club, an informal gathering of book lovers who read and discuss the classics on the internet.

Marilyn Green Faulkner likes to read and talk about books. She is the author of Back to the Best Books: How the Classics Can Change Your Life, a guide to 36 great works of literature. Available on amazon.com.