Maturity in Literature

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Research

In my research I investigated the topic of maturity in literature. Maturity can be defined as ‘gaining knowledge from experiences that gives you a new out look on life and a new set of life skills.’ I choose this topic as I have studying short stories in class where the theme was coming of age and maturity. With these stories the protagonist goes through a negative experience and at the end of the experience they gain knowledge, which gives them a different out look on life, which could be defined as maturity.

The texts I choose were ‘The Flowers,’ by Alice Walker, ‘Ace of Diamonds Gang,’ by ‘Own Marshall,’ and ‘Lord of the Flies,’ by ‘William Golding.’ I choose these texts as they all followed the theme of maturity. They are all about young children under the ages of fourteen who go through a negative experience and come out with a more mature understanding of society. After picking my texts I analyzed them by extracting the key events the protagonist went through and what they learnt from the experience by answering three questions. My questions were, ‘What examples of immature behaviour does the protagonist exhibit before their coming of age experience,’ ‘What key event leads the protagonist to a more mature understanding of the world and ‘Is the protagonist better or worse off after their coming of age experience.’

What examples of immature behaviour does the protagonist exhibit before their coming of age experience?

Across all my text each protagonist exhibits immature behaviour. In the novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ by Golding, a group of schoolboys are stuck on a deserted island with no adults as their plane crashed while being evacuated from England during World War 2. When these boys first arrive on the...

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...the narrators case the consequences that he faces are negative, which makes him worse off. Before hand he never got caught and therefore he never had to face the consequences, but now he sees that his actions have consequences making him worse off. In the last case in ‘Flies’ by Golding Jack the protagonist is better off. This is a change compared to the other texts. Jack is better after his coming of age experience as he now knows that for society to function properly it needs rules and order which Jack removed when he left Ralph’s tribe which had rules and order to create his own tribe which functioned on rituals and hunting. While Jack had his tribe he ordered the murder of Piggy the cleaver and clear thinking adviser to Ralph and the attempted murder of Ralph, which eventually lead to the boys being rescued. For Jack to get to the point of understanding

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