Comparison Between 'Lying Lives Of Adults And The Burning Girl'

Novels allow readers to consider the complexity of simultaneously understanding others and themselves. Both composers position their audience to reassess the impact of the interdependent nature of relationships and developing identities in characters’ formative years. In Lying Lives of Adults, author Elena Ferrante explores how rapid changes in the nature of a character’s relationship can detrimentally impact the formation of their identity by focusing on the protagonist Giovanna’s disillusionment with her parent’s lives. On the contrary, in The Burning Girl, Claire Messud demonstrates how the development of a character’s identity influences and alters their connections with others through the protagonist Julia. Through the authors' positioning

In her book Lying Lives of Adults (2019, Adults), Elena Ferrante utilises the protagonist Giovanna’s rebellion against her parent’s influence along with her reconstructing her identity for her love interest to impose onto the audience that identity is completely shaped by the impact of relationships with others. Ferrante’s ironic conclusion to the novel is foreshadowed from the beginning, as Giovanna reflects to the audience that “in fact I am nothing, nothing of my own”, implying that despite the novel being about her finding her identity, her relationships with others remain what shapes it. At the beginning, Giovanna idolises her parents, dressing and acting in ways that appease their worldview, only realising the extent of their influence when her aunt calls her out on being “ridiculous” in her “pink shoes, pink jacket, pink barrett”. This contrasts with Giovanna’s self expression later in the novel shown in the quote “my eyes were black, my lips, every item of clothing was black”, colour symbolism for her journey from forming her identity around her parents (wearing pink) to forming it around being as distanced from them as possible

While both Adults and Burning acknowledge the complexities of modern relationships that accompany the transition from childhood to adulthood, Burning focuses on how the protagonist Julia’s identity development changes the nature of her relationship with Cassie. Julia and Cassie’s shifting senses of selves leads to an irreversible rupture in their life-long friendship, as Cassie rebels against her parents and Julia focuses on academics. Similarly to Ferrante, Messud uses contrast to highlight the extent of identity change characters undertake, beginning the novel with the quote; “I can begin when Cassie and I were best friends, or I can begin when we weren’t anymore” said by the narrator Julia. The quote is preceded by Julia reflecting that “each of us shape our stories so they can make sense of who we think we are”, suggesting that the novel is a reflection of her perspective on what caused her relationship with Cassie to change. This approach contrasts with Adults, as Julia focuses on Cassie’s identity shift as a result of her rebelling against her parents and being influenced by others, offering an outside perspective of an identity crisis almost identical to