#Pre-Adulting

*Buy yours today at:  https://www.xerox.com/en-eg/printer-supplies/paper For me, the peak of the novel was when Jason finds a stack of Xeroxes with a message supposedly from Mr. Kempsey, his form teacher, in response to Jason’s bully situation. Much like lines from an old bearded wizard in the middle of a knight’s quest, or an ancient clam who has seen it all, these words hold the same sagacity. They provide the harsh truth--“contrary to popular wisdom, bullies are rarely cowards;” they poke at recent events Jason has been struggling with--”Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable;” and they also state facts, which in context are excellent advice, particularly the last line, “Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty” (Mitchell 213). Jason’s narrative throughout this whole novel has been clouded by his hyper-sensitive awareness of others around him, including the social hierarchy amongst his peers. The influence of others’ thoughts even seep i

            Alison Bechdel begins and ends her graphic novel Fun Home with the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Her perspective of the myth changes, however, as she grows older.  In her early childhood, Bechdel is only a spectator of her father’s struggles as she depicts him as both Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus was a builder; he created the labyrinth for the minotaur and Icarus’ wings. In similar fashion, Bechdel’s father is building the family house, and she calls him “a Daedalus of decor” (Bechdel 6). Bechdel also gives him the title of “artificer.” It implies that unlike Daedalus, her father’s creation is not just a project but a camouflage. Her father is unable to come out as gay because society was not as receptive at the time, so his painstaking work on the house is how he artfully tries to cover his identity. The house is not only how he expresses himself, but it is also his attempt at creating the image of a normal family where he is a normal father. Yet Bechdel never feels

    When Esther spends the night with Constantine, she imagines what it would be like if they were married. She says, “ This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like” (Plath 84) . She also recalls the time she was visiting the Willards when she saw a rug that Mrs. Willard had made with Mr. Willard’s old suits. Esther describes how she would have hung it on a wall to be admired, but Mrs. Willard uses it as a kitchen mat, and “in a few days it was soiled and dull and indistinguishable from any mat you could buy for under a dollar…” (85). This is a particularly important memory because it’s an insight to Esther’s perspective of marriage and the life of a housewife. For her, marriage is something that changes women for the worse. Mrs. Willard had spent weeks making this rug, and Esther says how she “admired the tweedy browns and greens and blues patterning the braid” (84). The rug represents both women and their

       We are given a window into Holden’s character when he tells Phoebe his interpretation of the Robert Burns poem, “Comin thro’ the Rye.” He had heard a little boy singing it as “body catch a body, coming through the rye” instead of the original “body meet a body, comin thro’ the rye.” He says how he imagines children running through fields of rye, and his dream job would be to catch them from falling off the cliff. Although it is only a small passage, its meaning resonates with Holden’s character throughout the novel. Catcher in the Rye shares just a phrase of the poem “Comin thro’ the Rye,” and we can only rely on Holden’s interpretation to understand the poem’s significance; however, when I read it in its entirety, I found that the poem itself--not just Holden’s mishearing of the line--is a reflection of his character as well. In the first verse, the narrator of  “Comin thro’ the Rye” describes a scene that he’s watching of a girl, Jenny, who is in a harrowing state: