The Intruder By Andre Dubus Summary

The coming of age genre is full of short stories and mini glimpses into the world of adolescence. Most coming of age books are set in the past and range from 5-20 minutes in length. They also focus more on thoughts and dialogue rather than actions. In these stories the reader has the ability to witness through the mind of a child and think back on how they handled similar situations, usually realizing how silly they were when they were younger. The specific examples from the stories I chose all focus on this idea of a specific event where the protagonist has to make a fateful decision, and the consequences that follow. In quite a few coming of age stories the author will depict a moment where the main character goes through an important event.

A majority of the story focuses on his thoughts while Connie’s boyfriend is over and they engage in certain activities such as smoking and drinking, which were things that Kenneth had not known her sister to do. During this time he goes outside and imagines a whole conquest like he often does in his free time of him taking over an enemy camp. “...he stared into the trees across the road and saw himself leading his soldiers through the woods.”(Andre Dubus, 272). This quote kind of foreshadows what happens at the end of the book, the reader can clearly tell from his visions that in all of these battles he comes out as a hero with no other consequences to face because it is just pretend. Contrary to this the reader notes later that Douglass (Connie’s boyfriend) goes home and Kenneth prepares to go to bed. As he is doing this he hears a noise outside and his mind sort of snaps back to the times he has spent in the forest. This kind of causes him to blur the lines between what is real and what is imaginary as his mind races back to images of grandeur when he had conquered imaginary foes. “He crawled away from the window, thinking of a large bearded man standing in the pine trees thirty yards from Connie's room, studying the house and deciding which window to use.”(279). Even

This is often the story arc of coming of age books but every once in awhile there will be a moment where the protagonist is able to make the correct decision and it is these moments that push the protagonist grows into maturity and ultimately, adulthood. A perfect example of this is in the story “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing. This suspense filled book is about a little boy named Jerry who is attempting to get through a large tunnel submerged in water. “If he did not do it now, he never would. He was trembling with fear that he would not go; and he was trembling with horror at that long, long tunnel under the rock, under the sea” Jerry says these words right before he takes the plunge into the water to get through the tunnel. You can see jerry’s apprehension and hesitation at going through the tunnel, just as many people are scared to face the idea of growing up and becoming an adult. “An immense, swelling pain filled his head, and then darkness cracked with an explosion of green light. His hands, groping forward, met nothing; and his feet, kicking back, propelled him out into the open sea.” once he started the journey through the crevice in the rock it was a very tight space and a very strenuous crawl, towards the tunnel he loses track of how long he has been underwater, at the point where he feels like he