Closed Season on the Kids

"Closed Season on the Kids" is a review of Don't Shoot—We Are Your Children by J. Anthony Lukas, published in the book review section of Life Magazine on April 9, 1971.

Summary

Rollo May, c. 1977

The psychiatrist Rollo May once said that we are in the midst of one historical era ending and another beginning, the most radical break since the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance. Perhaps they had their own generational clashes then. When asked what this new era would look like, he replied that humanity would now look inward, but Vonnegut says that such adventures are bound to disappoint all but the "most listless citizens" and the new mania will be for extensive sharing. This conclusion comes from reading this book which studies ten disaffected young Americans in an ethnographic manner. Two of them, "Groovy" and Linda, who were both eventually murdered, shared everything in their lives.

Others in the book had "more sophisticated forms of socialism", such as Jerry Rubin, who thinks the radicals and hippies are looking for a new community. Vonnegut calls the book "great journalism"—the piece on Linda won the Pulitzer prize in 1968—framed by the concept of the generation gap. The other stories don't end as dramatically, with climaxes no more theatrical than the young person wanting a society more fair than the present. It argues that we should not shoot our children, because they are our relatives and they are good, even if they are often in confrontation with those who approve of the present system. Although eccentric, they are brave and on the side of virtue. Another psychiatrist, Erik Erikson, says that the younger generation is trying to make overt what was covert in the previous generation, the child seeking to express what the parent repressed. The question is, which parent and which child?