TOW #5: The Myth of Adulthood

The text I chose to read was The Myth of Adulthood by Annie Battles. This essay was essentially Annie Battle's perspective of growing up and how it changed throughout. She had a childish view of things at the age of 8, then at 16 she was a teenager where her life revolved around boys and she thought she could do things and get away with it. She is now 24 and she feels although her life and perspective is a lot different than she expected it to be. She describes that her 8 year old self would never expect that her life would be like this, at the same age as the actors in Friends, a show she watched when she was younger. The author has credibility because they graduated from Bards College and was formerly a public relations/marketing professional at a lifestyle company. The author isn't extremely opinionated, she explains how her view changed. The intended audience is adolescents and young adults because these are the main highlighted points of her life that are in the essay, she talks the most in depth of her time being an adolescent and a young adult (which is where she is right now). The context of this essay is speaking to the audience where the author retells her experience of how at different points of her life, her perspective changed and was a lot different than how she thought it would be. An important rhetorical device used to achieve Battle's purpose is a friendly and informal tone. This is highly effective because it allows the author to connect to the audience by making them more comfortable as if she is talking to them directly. The audience is easily able to understand when the author says things like, "they didn't go to any school, they lived in their own apartments, and despite the theme song, they seemed pretty on top of their shit". Annie Battle's purpose in writing this text is to give light to her changing perspective of life. She wants her audience to recognize that your life may turn out to be very different than how you thought it would be, and it's not such a bad thing if that happens. I believe that the author did an exceptional job of achieving her purpose because she puts herself in the shoes of the audience and gives examples that a lot of adolescents have experienced, such as going to parties and getting away with things.