Coming Of Age Stories

In many children and young adult books, the transition from being a child to becoming more “adult-like” is a common theme. Coming of Age stories gives its readers the opportunity to go through the transition period with one or more characters from the novel. Most of these stories share similar conflicts, struggles, barriers, and developmental milestone that most of the readers are dealing with at that particular point in time of his/her life. These books and sometimes novels, describe the barriers in ways that all readers can relate to regardless of time period; these stories become more timeless universals for all readers to connect with.

Reading coming of age stories are always interesting and at times nastolgic. Coming of age stories typically include a young protagonist forced to make a grown decision which is a transition to their first move into adulthood. In a sense, these stories show the protagonist shifting from innocence to gaining experiences. The two coming of age stories that we read in class were “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett and “The Man Who Was Almost A Man” by Richard Wright. Both being coming of age stories, they have similar features but were different in the sense that one protagonist seemed to have made a shift into adulthood whereas one did not.

Coming of age novels, Cold Sassy Tree and To Kill a Mockingbird introduce readers to 14 year old Will Tweedy of Cold Sassy, Georgia and 5 year old Jean Louise “Scout” Finch of Maycomb County, Alabama. Both characters were brought up in small, close-knit southern towns, with false views of the world, and ignorance to knowledge and experience. As the stories progess however, the two gain a new type of knowledge and realization of the world. Experiences dealing with love, death, racism and discrimination helped the character’s child-like ideas of the world blossom into a more adult-like perspective. Will and Scout had changed in ways both . My paper will further discuss the traits that Scout Finch and Will Tweedy share.

Older characters in movies are depicted as wise people who guide others along the correct paths. These adults play an important role by supporting the major characters so that they may continue after they make a mistake or stray from their goal. Elders are depicted as having great compassion and understanding or having more worldly knowledge than the other characters in the film. Though many older characters are commonly portrayed as understanding they do not always follow the archetype. Each race has their own type of elder that go about helping characters in different ways. Asian elders tend to be very strict when dealing with younger characters were as asian elders tend to be cryptic or non-exist as they want younger people to find their

My coming of age moment happened at a very young age. I was only five years old when I had my first true moment. Before I was five years old, as far as I can remember, I was a really happy and innocent child. I didn’t really have any cares, as a young child shouldn’t. I was a seemingly normal child with a white picket fence kind of life. Then a couple weeks after I turned five, my mom passed away. It was from that moment that I knew what the world was really like and I knew that my life was never going to be the same. I began to take on guilt and responsibilities that a kid never should’ve had to. I began to become very precautious of everything and I wasn’t able to do the things that a normal child could do out of fear that something may happen

Everyone has a different concept of beauty. Philosophy expert, Andrea Borghini says, “Beauty is one of the most fascinating riddles of philosophy” (Borghini). Throughout life a person's concept of beauty changes many times. Scott Westerfeld demonstrated how people’s concept of beauty changes several times in the book The Uglies. After examining the book, it has become clear that to come of age a person must go through three main stages of beauty; innocent beauty, experimental beauty, and mature beauty.

Jane has visions and day dreams since she was a child. The ‘Red Room’ is the place where Jane starts having visions, she has one of a strange figure when she had been locked in the red room by her Aunt Reed; “…the strange

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is presented in the Victorian Period of England. It is a novel which tells the story of a child's maturation into adulthood. Jane's developing personality has been shaped by her rough childhood. She has been influenced by many people and experiences. As a woman of her time, Jane has had to deal with the strain of physical appearance. This has a great effect on her mental thinking and decision making. Jane Eyre's cognitive and physical attributes have been affected by her environment throughout her life.

Jane Eyre and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man also use distinct ways to show the growth of identity in their characters. One of these is the narrator: in Jane Eyre, the story is told in first person through Jane’s own eyes. By writing in the first person, Brontë creates an effect by which Jane’s point of view is the only one that is available in its entirety

When Jane was a child, she lived with her Aunt and cousins, John, Georgiana, and Eliza in their home called Gateshead. Jane’s parents had died and she supposedly had no other family, so her uncle insisted on taking her, but shortly died after and Jane was left in the care of  Mrs. Reed, her aunt. Throughout her time there, Jane became the target of physical and verbal abuse, especially from her Aunt and John. Jane remained obedient and quiet with little protest because it would only bring her more trouble to be rowdy. She was considered a burden, and was oppressed through everything she did. After being attacked by John, Mrs. Reed  punished Jane instead of him; she got locked away in a room where her uncle died and eventually fainted from anxiety and panic. Ever since that experience, Jane acted more rebellious and outspoken to Mrs. Reed and even lashed out at her, speaking about every terrible thing Mrs.

Most of the time, becoming an adult is planned. There are religious ceremonies, the gaining of a driver’s license, and other forms of new responsibility to signify the coming of age. Sometimes though maturity comes at you like a freight train. It comes at you in the blink of an eye and there is no stopping it once it hits you. You are forced to grow up and take on new responsibilities that you thought you wouldn’t have to take on until many years later. It's up to you though to decide what to do from there. You can either try and run away from the problems you have come to face or you can take the train head on and conquer what has been presented to you. I decided to face the train.

Thus, the Red room is often interpreted as what Jane must overcome in her struggle against oppression, and signifies her position of exile and imprisonment, and her exclusion from love and independence. The Red room leaves a permanent impression on Jane and is representative of ‘The madwomen in the attic’ theory as Jane is transported back to her vision of the Red room whenever she feels trapped and oppressed. The presence of her dead Uncle’s spirit in the Red room sets the tone for the novel’s gothic and uncanny elements. Jane want’s revenge but she must learn to find a more controlled way to fight

What is coming of age? In broadest terms, a transition from childhood to adulthood defines coming of age, but how can a literary character “grow up” in a fifteen-page short story or even a 200-page graphic novel? The protagonist usually reaches an epiphany and discovers something that taints the naivité and innocence associated with being a child. For instance, Omovo, the Nigerian protagonist of “In the Shadow of War” by Ben Okri, follows a mysterious woman into the woods. His realization occurs when he discovers the horrible truth of war; Nigerian soldiers assault her. On the other hand, Marji from Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is more slowly exposed different aspects war over the course of the novel and eventually leaves her home country, signaling a coming of age. Both Omovo and Marji discover the horrible truths of war during their story and lose their innocence; these stories reveal that a traumatic event triggers a coming of age.

As a child, Jane lived with her malicious Aunt Reed at Gateshead Hall due to the death of her parents. Her Aunt Reed and cousins John, Georgiana, and Eliza disliked her and treated her cruelly. In one incident, Jane was sent to the red-room as punishment, which was the bedroom of his Uncle Reed, and also the bedroom in which he died. Jane claimed to have seen the

Jane is an orphaned girl that ends up being raised and horribly mistreated by her aunt Mrs. Reed. One day for fighting with her cousin, Mrs. Reed puts her in the red room-the room where her uncle had died. She thinks she sees his ghost, and faints. When she wakes up to hearing Mr. Lloyd suggest she be sent away to school, while her aunt agrees. She goes to Lowood School where the principal is horrible and teaches poverty to his students. Although she makes a friend named Helen burns, she dies from a disease that sweeps through the school. This disease prompts her principal to leave and the school is taken over by a better group of gentlemen where they make Jane’s life significantly better. She graduates from the school and eventually becomes a teachr there. After two years, she becomes bored with it and becomes a governess at Thornfield and teaches a girl named Adele. She eventually comes to love Rochester, her