Coming of Age Essays

As a 12-year-old schoolboy, Paul Slabolepszy, one of South Africa’s most outspoken anti-apartheid playwrights, had his first encounter with political protest. Raised in a conservative, rural town and educated at a segregated Catholic boarding school, Slabolepszy remembers traveling to Johannesburg for a sporting event with the swim team. On the way, the bus full of…

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel about a young boys coming of age in Missouri of the mid-1800s. The main character, Huckleberry Finn, spends much time in the novel floating down the Mississippi River on a raft with a runaway slave named Jim. Before he does so, however, Huck spends some…

ying In A Lesson Before Dying, Mr. Grant Wiggins’ life crises were the center of the story. Although he was supposed to make Jefferson into a man, he himself became more of one as aresult. Not to say that Jefferson was not in any way transformed from the “hog” he was into an actual man,…

When a boy loses his parents he is forced to become a man. Both Empire of the Sun and Night have a character, who goes through the hard times of a war camp during World War II and is forced to grow beyond his years to survive. In Empire of the Sun, written by J.G….

The Coming of AgeChildhood is a time where children learn about the world around themselves. They see and experience many factors that influence their everyday lives, which help them grow stronger when they become adults. In ‘Girl’; by Jamaica Kincaid and ‘The Lesson’; by Toni Cade Bambara the characters within the stories learn valuable lesson…