I don't think there is a specific moment when a person comes of age. I think that it does take place over several years, before which one is a child and after which one is an adult. I feel like I have started to come of age, but that the process isn't over for me yet. I try to think logically and rationally, weighing options, possibilities, and most importantly, the future. I try to think ahead and I think that is a large part of what separates an adult from a child.
The process of Coming of Age takes several years, and a good analogy for that would be height. We are always aging or growing taller, but the Coming of Age is like a growth spurt where you mature quickly over a short period of time (relative to your whole life of course), after which you are significantly taller. You may not have reached your final height yet and you still have some growing to do, but a lot of the growing is out of the way.
This analogy isn't perfect, of course, because an adult can keep growing and reflecting even when they are older, whereas the average human is done growing taller by the age of twenty five. But Coming of Age is a gradual process that can be accelerated. I know that I'm not done with that process, so I will come back to this blog in sixty years and update you on my progress!
Hopefully you will come back once again before the blog deadline next Friday to update your blog:) I definitely agree that there is no moment in time in which your mindset changes; it changes throughout the course of your life as you experience more and more. I shy away from the word mature because it's a bit arbitrary. What's considered mature for one "culture" might not symbolize anything for another. But I understand the gist of what you're saying.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the adult looking back on this process as a form of reflection on his or her current life and identity is interesting, and totally relevant to how these novels all work (and we see this dynamic especially strong in _Portrait_)--the process of coming of age is mysterious and ambiguous and emotionally fraught for the person going through it, and he or she is maybe not even totally conscious of it when it's happening (too emotionally invested, lacking in self-knowledge, etc.), but once it's happened, this period of life becomes a source of fascination for the adult author to reflect upon in retrospect. I can attest to this personally, as the four or five years between ages 13 and 18 loom larger in my own personal set of memories; I find myself returning to this period of life in my reflections far more often than any other five-year period, and there's something profound about a process I had no real awareness of at the time.
ReplyDelete"I try to think logically and rationally, weighing options, possibilities, and most importantly, the future. I try to think ahead and I think that is a large part of what separates an adult from a child." I really like this line because I think you've highlighted a crucial thing that separates someone "not grown up" to someone "grown up." It's also interesting to realize that sometimes, you really just can't logically consider a decision until you're actually in a position to do so. I think that I could boast the most incredible reasoning abilities and I still might not be able to truly consider all my choices for a given situation until I'm actually placed in it and have direct access to the thoughts and emotions I'm having. I think that's another important distinction in coming-of-age because part of coming-of-age is simply having more life experiences.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the height analogy you made was really good, because I used the height thing as my definition of coming of age for a long time. First, I had to get taller than my sister. Recently I've been almost catching up to my dad, but not really. Height is really the most tangible of the processes so it's much easier for younger people to conceptualize. I remember thinking when I was a child that height=respect and that since adults look down on children physically they also look down on children mentally. This perception was shattered once I got to middle school and students started becoming taller than teachers but still treated the same. Ultimately, I think it comes down to mental tallness, or how tall someone acts is how they're treated.
ReplyDeleteI think that the growth spurt analogy makes a lot of sense. There is a period of time around when we are considered legally an adult that we are barraged with many responsibilities such as driving, drinking, and challenges such as college. I feel like we are forced to develop very quickly similar to a growth spurt.
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