Coming of age is an event that everyone must go through. There are many different types of coming of age events that can happen at many different times. Many different stories illustrate the process of coming of age. Through our studies of different texts we have learned that there is no wrong way to come of age. In “Marigolds” the main character Elizabeth Collier came of age by destructing something someone cared about.
As people age, their innocence begins to fade. This happens progressively, as you further venture into your life, and all aspects of it. Like, witnessing death, or anything significant as such, you may feel a sense of loss, hatred, and even disgust. In the short story, “The Novitiate written by Jean Howarth”, the main character loses her innocence of a child, after realizing her brother slaughtering a gopher, in return for some cash . Her heart had shattered, as did her child-like mentality.
Age doesn’t define maturity. Older people are always believed to be more mature; however, this is only because they have had more life experiences. They have faced many situations in life, but there exist young people who have been through their fair share of hardships which turned their innocent skin into strong armor. In the book,”The Glass Castle,” a young girl named Jeanette Walls is brought into this world by a selfish mother and a low-life father.
In her autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty illustrates how early memories of reading and books later inspired her to become a fiction writer. She uses intense diction, hyperbole, quotes, examples, and compare and contrast to support her purpose. She speaks in a reminiscent tone to a general audience. Welty narrates her love for literature and acknowledges the individuals that impacted her, ultimately conveying the intensity and value of these experiences.
On March 19th, 1944, Nazi forces invaded Hungary, the following summer German forces deported roughly 500,000 Jewish people to various concentration camps. Ellie Wiesel was one of them, he writes about this in his book “night.” A harrowing and brave true story about a Hungarian Jewish boy surviving the holocaust and the horror of Nazi ideals. The simple act of writing is an immensely complex thing to harness and implement into a deeper meaning.
In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, Ethan Frome’s past contributes to the story more than any other character’s. The other main characters’ past may have been more difficult or life changing, but Ethan’s past definitely builds the story more. Ethan’s past builds his character more and dictates almost everything he does. This cannot be said for the other main characters in the story. Ethan’s farmhouse has always been home to loneliness.
One example of innocence without womanhood is when Janie first creates her pear tree fantasy. When Janie first sees the bee pollinating the flower, she is only sixteen years old. The scene in general seems to have an erotic undertone to it. Janie watches the bee “sink into the sanctum of a bloom,”
There is a quote by well known author Ernest Hemingway, which states, "all things truly wicked start with innocence. "This quote embodies the theme innocence vs. age in the novel A Separate Peace very well. The theme reoccurs often, most notably in characters such as Leper and Gene, and even affects the entire student body at Devon. All of these characters experience a development from innocence and childhood to maturity and a more in depth understanding of the world.
In Chapter Three: The Early Years, the author reflects on the role race plays in children’s lives and how they perceive racial differences. The question used in the title, “Is my skin brown because I drink chocolate milk?”, generally reflects the author’s stance on how young children view race: with slight puzzlement and an assumption that white should be the default. One of the most important things the author discussed, in my opinion, is that kids ask questions. Anyone who has ever met a child knows that they ask questions about everything, sometimes even uncomfortable things, because they are still learning about the world.
The loss of innocence in the family. Elie loses his innocence at the young age of 15 due to the horrible things he witnessed during the Holocaust while at the concentration camps. When working, Elie sees how poorly the Germans are treating the Jews. Since the death of his father, Elie loses his hope in life. Elie is impacted by the loss of innocence in three ways by losing his faith in his future.
In Edith Wharton’s most remarkable novel, Ethan Frome, the main character, Ethan Frome, is in love with a prohibited woman… his wife's cousin. His wife, Zeena, is a sick woman who has a villainous essence to her and an irrevocable hold on Ethan. Mattie Silver is Zeena’s cousin and the woman Ethan is infatuated with. Through Ethan’s eyes, Mattie is described as youthful, attractive, and graceful basically everything Zeena isn’t.
As a text seemingly disparate from Edith Wharton’s other novels, scholarship surrounding Summer has tended to focus on gender and power constructions between Mr. Royall and Charity Royall. Recent scholarship, however, has focused on the social and cultural aspects of Summer. Elizabeth Ammons has taken a stark stance, problematizing Wharton’s portrayals of race by reifying normative racial constructions of the early twentieth century (68). Anne MacMaster notes the centrality of racial representations, though they appear to be marginal concerns to the plotline, in Wharton’s other work, The Age of Innocence.
Every human feels the need to speak and have a say in society. An African American writer newspaper, publisher, educator, lawyer, and abolitionist left the United States to Canada to work with the fugitive community. Her name was Mary Ann Shadd Cary. It was 1854 when her piece “Why Establish This Paper?” was published about antislavery in Canada. She uses her passion through ethos to persuade the editors in Canada to publish the newspaper, represented by colored Canadians.
Innocence is a word used to describe someone 's purity. Children are prime examples of innocence, as they don’t have judgments and don’t understand mature topics. In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the reader can interpret innocence as the growing up of the children. Specifically, Jem Finch showed a loss of innocence as he grew up. He showed his loss of innocence by not playing games, his more mature use of words and body language, and his different view of the world around him.
Innocence is something that can only be lost once. Within both The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley there are various characters that lose their innocence in very dramatic ways. A character can lose their innocence due to the death of someone else. They can also lose their innocence by just being looked at from a different perspective by others, this can be seen through the characters Bernard and Rachel. When a person is introduced to something new it can also affect their innocence.
