Literature is rife with coming of age stories. Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Things Fall Apart, Catcher in the Rye and a myriad others all have the “growing up” theme in them.
Just recently, I finished reading Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. The novel is a touching picaresque jaunt through the summer of a twelve-year-old boy in Green Town, IL. Douglas, the boy, is like any young boy, wanting adventure and fun, seeing magic in everything and being often faced with situations with which he suddenly sees differently than before.
In fact, Doug Spaulding documents his new wisdom in a “yellow nickle tablet,” labled “Discoveries and Revelations.” This something old / something new notebook opens a gateway into the mind of the young boy, as stated with the notebook’s introduction in the book:
The reason why grownups and kids fight is because they belong to separate races. Look at them, different from us. Look at us, different from them. Separate races, and ‘never the twain shall meet.’
A little later, after in incident involving one of the town’s nonagenarians, Tom comes to a “revelation” about the nature of older people:
‘…That’s brilliant! It’s true. Old people never were children!’
‘And it’s kind of sad,’ said Tom, sitting still, ‘There’s nothing we can do to help them.’
The fact is, really, in the eyes of most children, they’re right right. Adults and children really are two different races, and they never resembled each other, but what happens over the course of the novel, Douglas finds himself in situations in which his revelations are more and more “Adult” race and less and less “Child” race.
In a couple days, I’ll outline some of the changes, so check your feeders for part 2, coming soon.
