Coming Of Age Essay

     Childhood is a time where children learn about the world around themselves. They see and experience many factors that influence their everyday lives, which help them grow stronger when they become adults. In 'Girl'; by Jamaica Kincaid and 'The Lesson'; by Toni Cade Bambara the characters within the stories learn valuable lesson with help them grow to become better individuals. In 'The Lesson'; the character of Sugar undergoes a realization that society does not treat everyone equally, that not every individual has the same opportunity and equality that they should have. In 'Girl'; the main character learns that she must be perceived as a woman and not as a slut, her mother brings to her

Our identity is comprised of inner qualities and outer representations of self. It consists of innumerable defining characteristics that make up the whole of who we are in any given moment. These fragments of self include our sexuality, gender, and sense of belonging to a particular culture, nation, religion, family, or some other group. Our identity includes our looks, personality, beliefs and fears. Each individual in society assigns themselves a particular role, whether it be as a mother, brother, retiree, performer, sportsman or as a part of their occupation, a doctor or lawyer. Often one’s entire sense of self is consumed by

the most part. These years in a persons life have often been referred to as emerging adulthood.

Despite the large amount of people that feel confident and comfortable in expressing themselves freely, many adolescents have a deteriorating concept of self because of the belief that they should have to conform to their peer’s ideals. The identities of these children are being dictated by a need of acceptance from prominent social groups in their environment; however, teenagers must realize one’s own individuality as something beneficial and recognizing that conforming can become problematic in certain situations.

Summative - Write a literary analysis that develops an original thesis about the Coming of Age genre. Be sure to incorporate at least three stories.

No matter how old you are, you might know what It feels like to lose a loved one. Hazel Grace has never been anything but terminal, until she meets Augustus Waters, and that’s when her story is about to be completely rewritten. The novel is an emotional roller coaster dealing with first loves, terminal illnesses, secrets, passion and trust. In the novel, The Fault In Our Stars, Hazel Grace must go through what any person with a terminal disease must go through and beyond that: overcoming a terminal disease, love, and fear.

Rituals around the world all teach valuable lessons that help initiates see the value and importance of life. Each culture has different rituals that provide experiences for their youth to learn these valuable lessons of life. Many coming of age rituals are intense procedures. The Amazon's Satere Mawé youth enter adulthood through the bullet-ant glove initiation, teaching courage and endurance, and the crocodile scaring ritual that the men from the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea participate in teaches them pain and accomplishment.

Most of the time, becoming an adult is planned. There are religious ceremonies, the gaining of a driver’s license, and other forms of new responsibility to signify the coming of age. Sometimes though maturity comes at you like a freight train. It comes at you in the blink of an eye and there is no stopping it once it hits you. You are forced to grow up and take on new responsibilities that you thought you wouldn’t have to take on until many years later. It's up to you though to decide what to do from there. You can either try and run away from the problems you have come to face or you can take the train head on and conquer what has been presented to you. I decided to face the train.

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody was published on 1968. This autobiography is memoires of Anne Moody about growing up poor and black in the rural Mississippi. The book was divided into four parts from childhood until her late 20s that described the experiences of Anne Moody in the Civil Rights Movement and her struggles against racism.

Whether it be due the malleable minds of children, or the turbulent world around them, dramatic changes in life are an absolute certainty. Young, naïve children are highly impressionable. Their parents teach them one thing, their friends another, and society, yet something else. Fickle, they morph in and out of the plethora of ideologies and mindsets laid out in front of them. This leads to a disorienting and rather confusing child-to-young-adult life, one without a clear sense of morality. The lack of focus upon what is right and wrong, inherently subjective terms, continues into our early adult hood and, for better or worse, seemingly defines the child for the rest of his or her life. This universal theme has been explored for many years through films aptly called “coming-of-age” stories, recently, and perhaps most effectively in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012). This film revolves around Sam and Suzy, two recently pubescent kids, their romantic affair, and their effects on the world around them. The film not only captures the youthful dynamic between the two protagonists, but explores the “coming-of-age” theme through Anderson’s signature flat perspective and through the actors’ portrayals of these characters.

Middle adulthood is a complex time period that requires a multidimensional outlook to understand all of the processes and changes that are taking place. The many changes during middle adulthood include physical, cognitive and social differences. Many of these changes create significant stress and it is important to understand ways of coping with the anxiety. Many of these coping mechanisms include mindfulness and cultivating a sense of self-efficacy and mastery (pg. 482). There are many changes during middle adulthood that may require stress management techniques and interventions.

"Middle age is when your classmates are so old and wrinkled and bald, they don’t recognize you". -Bennett Cerf     

A common piece of everybody’s vocabulary today is a word used in various contexts with little understanding to comprehend what it really means. “Maturity”, the stream of questions that come to our mind when we begin to ponder on the eight letter word is numerous. The most basic being, “What is maturity? How does one step up on the pedestal of maturity? And how do we measure maturity?” Einstein puts his perspective on maturity in an even more complicated manner, “I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity”, this view point does paint us a picture of maturity, but leads us to a whole new world of mystification.

In John Green’s novel, The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel compares herself to a grenade that is volatile and can explode at any time and she is worried that she only leaves a negative impact on people and she will face oblivion which is her fear. She believes that people will only remember her flaws after she dies instead of her accomplishments and her positive traits despite her constant support from her parents and Augustus. Hazel tries to rationalize her cancer throughout the novel in various ways by presenting her thoughts indirectly to readers. The fact that cancer can kill somebody within seconds or in many years due to the fast widespread of cancer cells that doctors cannot find the cure to, despite the chemotherapy that people receive, cancer

While childhood seemed like a breeze, my adolescent years were anything but that. Adolescence, the transition between childhood and adulthood beginning with puberty, is a time full of physical and psychological changes both positive and negative. During this time individuals are in search of their identity, a task that can yield a lot of confusion. The question of who am I lingers in the back of adolescent minds and the answer anything but simple. This struggle for an identity and one’s place in society can lead to stress. Through exploration and soul searching, however, one might find their identity. For me, this question seemed impossible to answer, however, I always had a strong desire to fit in and be liked by others. Reading through the different developmental theories in the text, I started to compare them to events in my own life and noticed many significant similarities.