Coming Of Age Literature Analysis

An Awakening Coming of age literature can be defined as literature that follows the growth of a youth as he or she shifts from adolescence to adulthood and awakens to who he or she is while seeing the world around him or her differently. These coming of age narratives look at the time when family, mentors, friends, peers, relationships, and community influence and shape a youth into the person they will one day be. And, coming of age literature contains similar characteristics such as, innocence of the world’s expectations, life that seems simple as a child but more complex the older one becomes, the disappointment of discovering life is not as black and white as once perceived, tension between family members or peers, conflicts within oneself

The protagonist seems to see a little of herself in the horse, Flora, who is free-spirited and excitable, so the day Flora is to be killed, she escapes from the hired hand and starts to run for the open gate. The men start to yell and tell the protagonist to close the gate, but instead, she opens the gate wider and allows the horse to escape. Since the horse escapes the men must chase her, and they allow the protagonist’s brother to go along while the protagonist waits at home with her mother. After this scene, Munro explains the protagonist no longer dreams of stories where she is the hero, but instead, she has accepted her role of a female who the hero saves. At the end of the story, the protagonist demonstrates an acceptance and realization of a complex and difficult world and her place in it, when she describes her father after he discovers that she opened the gate. Munro writes, “he spoke with resignation, even good humor the words which absolved and dismissed me for good.” “She’s only a girl.” The protagonist feels excused by her father and accepts her place in the complex and difficult world as a female destined to be in the kitchen, not in the barn, and saved by a