Thursday, March 5, 2015
Cracks
I feel like the imagery of a cracking mirror really helps portray almost all of these novels in their most basic sense. All of their images of themselves are slowly being broken and stressed as the novels continue and I think that this is something that is very important in a coming of age novel. When these characters are forced to see their true selves they either accept it, such as Stephen, or have a very hard time dealing with it like Holden and Esther. I think that this is something most of us are going through or have gone through in life. You can't always be a kid and sometimes reality starts to break through the fantasies playing in your mind. The most important message I got from these novels was the idea that everyone goes through change and you will make it. For how much Holden hates adults, he is becoming one and it starts to really eat at him. For how much Stephen wants to be a character in a novel, the more life forces him back into reality. The more Esther wishes to be like everyone else and conform, the harder it is to cope with life. There really isn't anything they could have done, and as we discussed today, it might even be a necessary step in maturing for them. If they had not gone through with this process they might have been worse off or never really gotten out of the depressed or confined life they were in.
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I agree that both Holden and Esther were able to come out of their original images of themselves and accept their changing selves. Although, I think that their sense of self at the beginning of the novel was one which they had accepted until it started to fall apart. I don't necessarily think that these images were fake but they were able to mature once they dealt with their problems
ReplyDeleteI never thought about it this comparison, but it makes a lot of sense. Humans can be very fragile at our cores. In life, sometimes it's all about what you make of a situation, and it helps us to take one more step to maturity,, like you mentioned. .
ReplyDeleteI think these characters' process of coming of age will affect who they are as adults, so I definitely agree that the difficult coming of age process might be necessary. This sounds cheesy, but in order to have a good life, you need to acknowledge that life is hard, and not all of it is going to flow smoothly.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that people in real life also put up those shells sometimes. If you think about the "spoiled" kids around the world, many of them have that shell that keeps them protected from the outside reality. Their parents pay for everything, yell at teachers for giving their kids a bad grade, or give the kids whatever they want, whenever they want. Eventually though, those shells are forced to break and the spoiled children are forced into the real world. At that point in their lives, they are forced to decide whether or not they will accept who they truly are.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that people in real life also put up those shells sometimes. If you think about the "spoiled" kids around the world, many of them have that shell that keeps them protected from the outside reality. Their parents pay for everything, yell at teachers for giving their kids a bad grade, or give the kids whatever they want, whenever they want. Eventually though, those shells are forced to break and the spoiled children are forced into the real world. At that point in their lives, they are forced to decide whether or not they will accept who they truly are.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that these images that Esther and Holden originally have are fake, just the world around them began to change, so they needed a new image to adapt to it. Like the humble hermit crab, they must shed their old selves and find a new shell to better suit the environment they must endure.
ReplyDeleteI think it's called teenage angst... but yeah. This is definitely the time to explore all your crazy ideas and stuff to prevent a life of what ifs. Although I don't think this is as rare of an occurrence as the books make them out to be. You're not going to reevaluate your life only once--you live a pretty long life--you're going to do it multiple times. Remember mid-life crisis? Yeah. I think it's healthy to break down once in a while. It makes you feel something after going through the same routine over and over again. :)
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