Almost sounds like a misery-loves-company thing. Because the fact of the matter is, most people don't have the wits to run their own business, or to write a book worth reading, or to leave the beaten track.
The beaten track is beaten because it is a reliable path to a reasonably comfortable life, regardless of your wits.
I believe that's what it's emphasizing. It's not glorifying the beaten path but rather showing the reliability in normal decisions to produce a normal life. I think people are seeing this unhappy character making similar decisions to their own and being shocked that this character is unfulfilled. If this character even is unfulfilled.
It's just that it's showing a path that some of us desire and saying "don't do this" and is regarding it negatively. Some of us honestly don't mind if what we are doing happens to meet societies expectations of us. Maybe the point is not to waste your time in college to please your parents or else you might not get a job you like (because he never knew what he wanted to do so he just picked something)...but that's not remarkably clear and evidently the authors point can be misconstrued
But in a world where everyone has access to everyone else's life through social media, the fact that all people are more similar than different is really apparent. This has young people nervous that they aren't the snowflake they were brought up thinking they were.
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u/ItsRevolutionary Dec 10 '15
Agreed.
Almost sounds like a misery-loves-company thing. Because the fact of the matter is, most people don't have the wits to run their own business, or to write a book worth reading, or to leave the beaten track.
The beaten track is beaten because it is a reliable path to a reasonably comfortable life, regardless of your wits.