Coming of Age in Literature this Semester

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Recommended: coming of age essay introduction

Throughout this semester there has been a common ingredient to almost all of the pieces which we as a class have read, which is the coming of age. Much like the May L. Becker quote in the title says as we get old we begin to find ourselves, such was true for the protagonist throughout our readings this semester. The idea of coming of age or maturing as an individual has been presented in a number of ways. Some of which include O’Hara’s philosophy for the mother to let them go find their own way, and Winterson shows the forming of your own ideas about the world. Lethem finds that growing up involves facing the truth, and Lowell has a similar coming of age story except much later in life.
Within the poem Ave Maria, a coming of age in presented in a way most don’t consider. O’Hara tries to convince mothers of America to let their children go out and discover the “darker joys” of the world for themselves. His argument is to get them out of the house so “they won’t know what you’re up to”. If they go off to a movie two things can happen. One, they can go and for the cost of a quarter wat...

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