Innocence versus Sexual Awakening Essays

This novel “is a book that truly speaks to adolescents in contemporary language and with teenage characters about adolescent sexuality” (Kaplan 27). Katherine is learning about her sexuality in the novel.

A rite of passage is defined as a ceremony marking a significant transition or an important event or achievement, both regarded as having great meaning in lives of individuals. In Sharon Olds' moving poem "Rite of Passage", these definitions are illustrated in the lives of a mother and her seven-year-old son. The seriousness and significance of these events are represented in the author's tone, which undergoes many of its own changes as the poem progresses.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is a book that gave the word “love” many other meanings, such as impossible, meaningless and incomplete. There were many unbearable obstacles that Countess Ellen Olenska, one of the main characters, had to face because of love. She was treated badly by many people and always longed for love but never obtained it. With everyone cursing her, betraying her and hurting her, there was one person who was always there for her. Newland Archer wasn’t only sympathetic towards her; he also began to fall in love with her. The love she always wanted. He was the man who truly cared for her and always helped her make decisions. Out of all the selfish people in New York who

Lastly, the loss of innocence throughout the transition from adolescence into adulthood plays a large role in the development of a new person in a new era. J.D Salinger, in The Catcher in the Rye, highlights this occurrence constantly throughout the novel by showing contrasting moments in Holden’s thoughts and opinions. The war has ended in the recent past, and therefore the current society is working towards getting back to normal, and therefore Holden loses his innocence during this challenging and exciting time period. In the beginning, he mentions that, upon the death of his brother, his family “[was] going to have [him] psychoanalyzed and all, because [he] broke all the windows in the garage” (Salinger 38). This shows the moment that

“Lust,” describes a young teenage girl who has mischievous meetings with many boys. The narrator, which is the young girl, attends Casey Academy which is a coed school. She is sexually active and does not fear pregnancy because she has been taking birth control pills since she was a young girl. The narrator describes her sexual expected gathering with the fifteen different boys she has been with, and when she talks about them she seems emotionally removed from the experience. The narrator’s parents don’t have a clue about what she has been getting herself into: “My parents had no idea. Parents never really know what’s going on, especially when you’re away at school most of the time. If she met them, my mother might say, “Oliver seems nice” or “I like that one” without much of an opinion...” (1029). The narrator’s parents do not show much interest in her life which can be a reason to why she craves

In A Separate Peace, John Knowles carries the theme of the inevitable loss of innocence throughout the entire novel. Several characters in the novel sustain both positive and negative changes, resulting from the change of the peaceful summer sessions at Devon to the reality of World War II. While some characters embrace their development through their loss of innocence, others are at war with themselves trying to preserve that innocence.

Having blossomed from a child into a well-developed young lady, Rachel begins her new teenage ways of “paying too much attention to boy” (150). In the eyes of her grandmother, the worse aspects of her new behavior is labeled as being like her mother, but Rachel exploring her sexuality with males is a result of her loneliness and the lack of sense of self. Through grandmother's hate towards Nella; half of herself had been unconsciously rejected, and it in the novel Rachel says in regards to her sexual touching from John Bailey that he had made all of what is really me feel really good.” (150) These are cries of help from a young lady desperately trying to find someone who loves her as her in the all wrong ways, and this gets further displayed

In Catcher in the Rye, Salinger explores the impactful life of a high school boy growing up in a societal standard that he despises. Adolescence is shown throughout the novel as a moment of growth and fear to losing innocence, fighting against growing up and becoming a part of what society expects. By wanting to fight against, Holden Caulfield takes the responsibility of keeping the innocence of children, never wanting them to grow out and view the world differently in its disappointing reality. Innocence is a primary virtue of greater knowledge. Yet death provokes desires to hold on his innocence, not wanting to have any mature bonds to avoid loss of someone he cares about.

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” written by Carol oates in 1970, portrays the cultural transition’s impact on teenager’s behavior in 1960’s. The new style of music highly influenced adolescent’s behavior, initiating a revolutionary era. That was a time which culture was rapidly changing. A sexual revolution was taking place, leading people, especially teenagers, to question the traditional and religious believes from previous generations. In addition, World War II had just ended in 1945, driving people to promote peace and love amongst themselves, especially through music for the next few decades. Despite all the peace and love movement, a series of murders began to arise in Tucson, Az. Charles Howard Schmid Jr., a 23-year-old man, brutally murdered numerous girls and made the national headlines. A creepy predator who was Oates inspiration to create the unscrupulous pedophile character of Arnold Friend. Connie is a 15-year-old girl who lives an ordinary life; confused about the girl she is, and the woman she is becoming. Being a teenager is not an easy thing overall, for any girl, in any era. Furthermore, she lives in a fast-paced, transitional phase in America; a phase which rock and roll is considered, “the devil’s tool,” to most parents; rock and roll lyrics began to be more explicit and provocative, hence, leading the young generation to break the traditional rules of a conventional era.

Everyone is born into this world with a sense of innocence, completely oblivious to the cruelties of the world. However, as humans grow up and reach early- adulthood, they begin to realize the realities of this world, all that is real and all that is, in fact, a figment of the imagination. As people learn that it is truly impossible to stay hidden from the harsh realities of adulthood for their entire life, they also learn that it is impossible to shield others from these truths as well. They learn that although they may not be able to protect themselves from life’s misfortunes, they must perceiver, move forward, and not hold anyone back in their tracks. Just as all humans eventually learn to accept and move past life’s various misfortunes,

Growing up sucks, anybody who is currently a teenager or was understands that and will fully acknowledge it. There is just something about this age group that life changing events occur, whether or not the person is ready or not to experience them. Most of the time, it is something like learning what a curse word means or experiencing the act of sexual intercorse at a young age. But sometimes it can be as serious as losing a loved one, being the victim of sexual assault, or any other traumatic event that just like a punch to the gut, acting is a welcome call to what is about to come. In author J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, it recalls the story by the narration of a

In her novel, The Age of Innocence, author Edith Wharton examines two different viewpoints of death. Wharton specifically highlights the view of death as an escape and the view of death as condemnation. Readers see these contrasting viewpoints through the impacts of the death of May Welland on Newland Archer.

In recent history video games, music, comic books, and movies had been blamed for provoking elements of juvenile delinquency in their audience. Frederick Wertham wrote Seduction of the Innocent in 1954, to warn that comic books were promoting criminal behavior. This debate about how media can affect its audience can be explored in the late nineteenth century also, with the youth literature and periodicals, or ‘penny dreadfuls ’, being targeted for causing robberies, murders, and even suicide. Many of the people in Britian were trying to become a more civilized or polite society and stories with criminals or macabre elements were considered distasteful. This debate was initiated in the 1860’s, and would continue until the late 1890’s when the

Oblivious to my surroundings, I blindly walk down unknown streets, animatedly clicking away on my overly-bejeweled cell-phone while snapping back replies to my enthusiastic confidants 200 miles away. It was a warm, July night and I was completely lost, in a completely different state, with completely unfamiliar roads.

Although Matilda is portrayed as a female child heroine, Colin Manlove implies that Nesbit suggests that the capabilities of female children are underestimated in his journal article entitled “Fantasy as Witty Conceit: E. Nesbit.” In this journal article, Manlove critiques that there are “two sides of Nesbit—the ‘realist’ and the ‘supernaturalist’...where magic is given a colloquial and comic face, and is brought into contact with very human children” (126). This implies that the direct audience are those oppressed by society’s double-standards, especially female children, and the indirect audience are those who ridicule the capabilities of the oppressed. The story draws attention to social issues (“realist”) by assimilating fantasy fiction (“supernaturalist”). In this case, both children and women are belittled due to their age and gender, respectively. Since gender bias is an issue, professors, who published the journal article “Gender Differences in Children’s Hero Attributions: Personal Hero Choices and Evaluations of Typical Male and Female Heroes,” observe that “boys were expected to endorse heroes for their ability to act on the world (instrumental attributes) and for their wealth or fame (prestige) more than girls” (Holub, et al. 569). This alludes that the gender gap does not only apply to adults, but also children. Through their