That's coming of age for YA
Young adult novels often focus around a main character’s
coming of age story, or many. Many popular young adult novels in recent years
have revolved around a certain formula, usually fantasy, of a teenage protagonist
growing up in a dystopian (or at least dangerous) world. The formula goes that
at first, the protagonist accepts this world and does whatever they can to accept
their place in the system and follow the rules. However, they soon discover
that their world is different than they learned as a kid, and face a point
where they need to make a big decision as to whether they will continue to fit
in in the prescribed system or whether they will rebel. They take a leap of
independence, which leads to a shift in their identity that carries them away
from childhood friends and mentors. In this new territory, they need to fend
for themself and usually discover that the culture they grew up in is
oppressive. They come of age along with the youth-led rebellion, and eventually
save the world and create a new culture, this time sure of their own place. There
are many books, and especially series, that follow this formula. A few I can
think of are The Hunger Games, Divergent,
Harry Potter, The Girl With All the Gifts, and many superhero comic arcs,
but I am sure there are many more besides.
This formula of changing the world to find your place in it
is obviously a metaphor for the struggles kids go through in growing up and
seeing that the world is a hard place to live in. Teens can live vicariously
through reading a coming of age novel where the protagonists are powerful and
respected, while struggling through school and home life and their own feelings
of powerlessness and inadequacy. Teenage rebellion is an understandable
response to learning that you haven’t yet been taught about everything that’s
going wrong in the world, and that it doesn’t always run as smoothly as you
were told. While falling into new independence and discovering new and exciting
paths that lead you away from your parents and childhood friends, teens can
feel lonely and lost. Reading coming of age novels can be a reassurance that
there is life after change, and that you will be okay.
I have noticed that coming of age novels written “for teens”
are sometimes very different from those written for adults. YA novels are often
very hopeful and caught up in the moments they are describing. They look
forward instead of back, and there is not usually a lot of introspection on the
feelings and thoughts coming of age brings up and what they mean. Novels for
adults, however, play on nostalgia. They help adults look back and dissect
their coming of age experiences to find meaning. They rely on memory, not real-time
experience. Often the line is blurry between books for teens and books for
adults, but these distinctions are common. I’m interested to see in which way
James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man will go in portraying the coming of age story. Is it a
life-changing adventure or an introspective memory – or both?
I refer to this idea in my course description, and I'd meant to articulate it on that first day of class, when we didn't get a chance to get into my course description in as much detail as I'd hoped: you're right, the books on this syllabus are distinct from the vast swaths of YA lit that all could be classed as "coming of age" literature. These books aren't "inappropriate" for young readers, but they aren't necessarily written with young readers in mind. These are adult authors contemplating the experience of coming of age (usually their own, in some capacity, because what else would you have to go on?), but with that necessary (and often ironic) critical distance from the time and age being portrayed. Irony is almost always part of the equation, therefore, as we feel the palpable distance between the author and the events/times being portrayed.
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