A child’s upbringing can severely affect who they are later in life. In particular, their transition into adulthood and the way they are initiated into this new stage of their lives is essential to their adult personalities. In “The Demoness Kali”, Shyam Selvadurai writes a story in which formal features of initiation are placed upon its main character, Shivan to demonstrate his coming of age. Through separation, mentors, and tests, Shivan is able to initiate into adulthood. Separation is a key and crucial phase of initiation. It starts the initiation process and helps jumpstart the entire practice. Shivan’s separation from his father, and eventually his mother leads to the beginning of his initiation story. Shivans initiation starts when …show more content…
Selvadurai uses an allusion to demonstrate his grandmother’s role as a negative mentor in Shivan’s life. His dream of seeing his grandmother “incarnated as the demoness Kali” running after him (in the body of his mother) is very telling of what Shivan subconsciously thinks of his grandmother. (Selvadurai 371) The demoness Kali is the Hindu goddess of destruction. Though she is seen as a god, her physical appearance is quite appalling. Her dark skin, red eyes, fangs and necklace made of human heads are all quite terrifying. When portrayed, she is often seen standing on top of the Hindu god Shiva as well. Kali’s frightful appearance, paired with her relationship with the god Shiva is very telling of Shivan’s relationship with his aachi. He fears her with every fibre of his being. In said dream, he imagines himself as his mother, carrying a child, running from his grandmother, but proving to be unfruitful when Kali, “snatches the infant from [his] arms and opens her mouth wide to consume him”. (Selvadurai 371) This baby is Shivan, and Kali eating the baby shows how as a mentor, she has taken away all the innocence from Shivan and taken him away from his mother. Shivan’s ammi shows how even negative mentors can push their mentees into
Eboo Patel describes the challenges of finding his way in life in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. While Patel faced crises of identity later in life, his adolescence was a time for self-discovery on a level any adolescent can relate to. "… identities can shift in an instant. I went from being a
Adolescence marks the turning point of an individual's life, establishing the foundation of their development. It is during this phase that individuals leave behind the comfort of childhood and enter a reality beset with new perceptions of life. There are many stages of life, each enclosing its own distinct characteristics. As evident in the short story, The Master of Disaster, written by Guy Vanderhaeghe, adolescence involves growth as an individual, both physically and emotionally. Although each phase has its own challenges and difficulties, adolescence proves to be the most difficult stage of life to overcome. Through examination of the situations in the story, it becomes apparent that adolescence involves experiencing emotional conflicts between friends, searching for one's identity amid a period of change and overcoming the negative influence of peer pressure.
Beyond the basic need for a sense of control, people are driven by their sense of identity, of who they are. Each person lives in their own universes, which are centered upon their feeling of self-purpose. There are multiple types of identities such as individual and group identities. Each person's identity is formed differently because of the unique experiences every individual encounters. The formation can be affected by many things such as their home environment, social concurrences, and physiological health. This story, A Separate Peace, exhibits interesting main characters which establish the frequent struggles of personal identity in adolescence.
How do we make the leap from child to adult? What obstacles must we overcome to finally reach the summit of all that we can be? Who can reform and influence our decisions, the very decisions that will shape who we become? In Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Antonio Márez must progress towards his own moral independence and choose his destiny. Tony is forced to endure difficult experiences too early in life, causing a premature loss of innocence. He is overwhelmed with a multitude of spiritual questions. To find the answers he seeks, Antonio must undertake a metamorphosis.
man, develop into an adult while dealing with the many crude actions and ways of
The two important psychoanalytic theories on human development are psychosexual development theory by Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory. Many researchers use these two major approaches to analyze the human development in different stages of life. Since Freud’s approach was the foundation of Erikson’s psychosocial theory, there are many similarities between them. Even though they are both focusing on phases of life, there are still some differences on the definitions and ideas of life stages. In this paper, I will concentrate on Freud and Erikson’s ideas of different stages of human development because these two approaches always come together and they are mostly overlapping. Yet, there are divergences and transformations between all the stages.
David Roediger, helps us understand “self-emancipation as both deeply rooted and glorious in its maturation” (p.9). The book juxtaposes stories usually not told together but David Roediger finds important connections and uses it to explain how to improve our better selves.
Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood. Love and affection during their formative years allow children to mature to stable adults. Children raised in neglectful situations turn bitter and their morals never develop correctly. Children raised in abusive households can see turning violence back unto their abuser as the only means of escape. As a consequence of lonely childhoods and callous guardians, the children in “Sweets to the Sweet”, “The Veldt”, and “Sredni Vashtar” turn to malicious supernatural ways to cope with their situations.
The average person wants one thing more than anything else, and that thing is to belong. Usha, a young girl from Calcutta, is no different. Already trying the find her place in the world, Usha must now assimilate into cultural society within the United States. Usha’s uncle, Pranab Kaku, came from Calcutta as well having first come to America, his experiences start off worse than Usha’s, which causes him to join the family in an act of social grouping. With the Old World trying to pull them back and the New World just out of reach, both must overcome tradition and develop their own personal values.
Growing up on a reservation where failing was welcomed and even somewhat encouraged, Alexie was pressured to conform to the stereotype and be just another average Indian. Instead, he refused to listen to anyone telling him how to act, and pursued his own interests in reading and writing at a young age. He looks back on his childhood, explaining about himself, “If he'd been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity” (17). Alexie compares the life and treatment of an Indian to life as a more privileged child. This side-by-side comparison furthers his point that
Childhood is described as the early stage of existence of something. Bertha Kaye Batt Gibbons was born on May 5, 1960, she lived in an old broken down home that lacked heat and electricity (Snodgrass p35). Kaye was born in Nash County in North Carolina. She was the youngest child of her family; however, she was mainly raised by her grandmother, Martha. Kaye was raised by her grandmother because in March 1970, her mother committed suicide by an overdose of pulse suppressing drug digitals (Snodgrass.p35). Her father was not much better than her mother, because he was a self-beating alcoholic. Kaye’s mother killed herself soon after she found out she was suffering from cyclical bipolarity, which is a manic depression (Snodgrass p35). When Kaye was eight she got put into a foster home because her grandmother was extremely ill and the doctors did not think she was going to make it. A woman named Mary Lee, became Kaye’s selected mother (Snodgrass p35). At the age of twelve Kaye was working in tobacco fields and attending the Childrens Bible Mission Camp at Falls of the Neuse River (Snodgrass p35). Kaye was never one to put herself out ther...
“Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other is gold” (Scout Songs 1); this catchy phrase repeats itself over and over in the mind of any devoted Girl Scout. While Mindy Kaling may not be the cookie-selling, vest-wearing Girl Scout that dutifully sings this tune, the phrase still rings true in Kaling’s book, Why Not Me?. Kaling spends chapter after chapter analyzing and retelling stories of her private life. These anecdotes range from relationship drama to career struggles and how Kaling overcame the obstacles in her path. However, the narratives that should resonate most with Kaling’s target audience, young American women, are those of friendships gained, friendships lost, and friendships put through the trials of time
In John Connolly’s novel, The Book of Lost Things, he writes, “for in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be”. Does one’s childhood truly have an effect on the person one someday becomes? In Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle and Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, this question is tackled through the recounting of Jeannette and Amir’s childhoods from the perspectives of their older, more developed selves. In the novels, an emphasis is placed on the dynamics of the relationships Jeannette and Amir have with their fathers while growing up, and the effects that these relations have on the people they each become. The environment to which they are both exposed as children is also described, and proves to have an influence on the characteristics of Jeannette and Amir’s adult personalities. Finally, through the journeys of other people in Jeannette and Amir’s lives, it is demonstrated that the sustainment of traumatic experiences as a child also has a large influence on the development of one’s character while become an adult. Therefore, through the analysis of the effects of these factors on various characters’ development, it is proven that the experiences and realities that one endures as a child ultimately shape one’s identity in the future.
Erik Erikson developed eight psychosocial stages that occur through life. These stages help parents of younger children understand what the child is thinking and why they are acting the way that they do. For a person to become a well-rounded adult they need to succeed in each level. This essay will discuss the first six stages into young adulthood.
This specific moment in Satrapi’s life also made me compare our upbringings as individuals. It made me realize the extent to which one’s environment has on his or her development. Satrapi’s upbringing in tumultuous Iran caused her to become a rebellious adult. Her growth into an adult is one of the most distinguishing events in her life, and made her into the person she is