In her hauntingly beautiful novel Tell The Wolves I’m Home, author Carol Rifka Brunt introduces readers to June Elbus, a distinctively shy, sensitive, and gloomy teenage girl growing up in New York in 1986-1987. June’s favorite uncle and person Finn has AIDS, a disease that takes his life in the early part of the book. June learns that Finn had a lover, Toby. At the end of the story readers see June and Toby forming an unlikely friendship. Regardless of the fact that she does so unconventionally, Carol Rifka Brunt tells the story Tell The Wolves I’m Home as a coming of age story. Firstly, to explain why Tell The Wolves I’m Home is a coming of age story or bildungsroman, the reader must have an understanding of what characteristics a bildungsroman story encompasses. According to literarydevices.net:
“A bildungsroman is
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Finally, he or she accepts those values and they are accepted by the society, ending the dissatisfaction.” Tell The Wolves I’m Home takes place in New York during the years 1986 and 1987. During this time, AIDS was a disease that only homosexuals had and transmitted. There was no cure, and those who had AIDS died. In the following quotation, the reader see a classmate asking about Finn’s illness. “Ben looked away for a second ‘He really had AIDS?’ I nodded. A few people had come up to me at school after they’d seen the article. I guess we were the first people to have any connection to this huge thing that was always on the news.” (156) Classmates and others in June’s school know about AIDS and speak about it in hushed tones, and are unable to make eye contact with June. Eventually, June learns to accept society’s hesitation about AIDS. Thus, Tell The Wolves I’m Home displays another element of a coming of age