Examples Of Coming Of Age In The Color Of Water

In all Coming of age stories the main character will have an era where they grow up and will eventually mature throughout the novel. Many stories are known to have coming-of-age topics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird”, "Romeo And Juliet”, and even “Then End of Everything”. The Color of Water is a perfect example of this. The Color of Water does fit the definition of a coming-of-age story because it has many traits that fit a coming-of-age novel including immaturity during the beginning to growing up throughout the novel, and losing childhood innocence.

We know that Ruth, James' Mom, had a lot of trauma from the past. Her Father was an evil man who was a racist and overcharged his black customers. We also know that Ruth’s father forced her siblings

They might say this because a lot of colored people have gone through racism and many different cultures have gone through a lot. However, this is a coming-of-age story because it shows how James might think it's better to be diverse. At first, James believed that it would have been easier for him and his family for everyone to just be one color, one race so nobody would treat each other differently. But James can see that it is a privilege for him to have multiple races of blood in him. He can see both worlds the black and the white ones. He is a black man with a Jewish soul. When he sees Pictures of the holocaust when he looks at the people, he can see his mother and himself in the different women whose children had been traumatized by the nazi soldiers. In the text it states, “As I walked home, holding Mommy’s hand while she fumed, I thought it would be easier if we were just one color, black or white. I didn’t want to be white. My siblings had already instilled the notion of black pride in me. I would have preferred that Mommy were black. Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds. My view of the world is not merely that of a black man but that of a black man with something of a Jewish soul. I don’t consider myself Jewish, but when I look at Holocaust photographs of Jewish women whose children have been wrenched from them by Nazi soldiers, the women look like my own mother and I