We’ve read a number of coming-of age stories so far this semester, among them Edward P. Jones’s “The First Day,” T.C. Boyle’s “Rara Avis,” Mary Robison’s “I Am Twenty-One,” Deborah Eisenberg’s “The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor,” Mary Morris’s “The Lifeguard,” Richard Ford’s “Communist,” and Steven Millhauser’s “Behind the Blue Curtain.” Read back through these stories, and develop an idea for an essay in which you discuss two or three of the stories in relation to a specific thesis. You might consider what exactly “coming of age” means in these stories. Does it always mean the same thing? How do the protagonists change in the course of the story, and what is particularly complex or interesting about that change? How, for example, does that change affect these protagonists’ views about their life and the lives around them? Or you might address some other aspect of the stories you choose: How, for example, do different characters look back upon their coming-of-age experiences? What do they suggest they have learned from such experiences?
For Tuesday, October 24, you should place your completed essay in the Essay 2 FINAL folder on Google Drive. Make sure you name the document in this manner: YourName.Essay2.docx. And makes sure your name is on the essay itself.