Journey from Childhood to Adults

Journey From Childhood to Adults

Everyday our youth is reminded of the reality of the world around them. As they grow up they learn the truth not only about our world, but themselves. They feel the pressure to conform to what others think is acceptable of them. In turn they overcome hardships that help them to grow as individuals. This rite of passage is called initiation. The presence of this theme occurs throughout our textbook in a number of stories.

The story “Doe Season”, by David Kaplan, is a great example of initiation in young children. The protagonist, who is a 9-yr-old-girl named Andrea, is faced with a serious gender problem. Her father desperately wanted a son when she was born, but instead got a daughter. In turn he raised Andy as a son, and she soon began to enjoy the attention from her father, and grew to love masculine activities. Throughout the story Andrea talks about what her mother is up to, and how glad she is not to be there. It states, “Where even now her mother was probably raising again to wash their breakfast dishes and make herself a fresh pot of coffee. She is there, and we are here: the thought satisfied Andy” (247). This quote explains how the character would rather be out in the woods with the boys, than cooking and cleaning house. All of the points mentioned, help to cause the conflict to arise. The last one, however, is mentioned a lot throughout the story. Both Charlie and Mac tease Andy constantly. They believe that since she is a girl that she should not be hunting. At the beginning of the story Charlie says, “I don’t understand why she’s coming. How old is she anyway-eight?” (246). Again in the middle he states, “That’s what the woods are all about, anyway,” Charlie, said. “ It’s where the women don’t want to go.” (252). These point out that Andy is not really where she belongs.

The effects on Andrea are that she completely shuns her female role and the activities involved. On the hunting trip it really shows the reader this when I compares the feminine to the masculine jobs. Throughout the story, Mac and Charlie tell Andy, that she doesn’t belong in the woods. All of Andy’s bottled up anger erupts, when shoots the deer, even though she got cold feet. Afterwards, she feels guilty for the fact that she didn’t kill the deer..’

The resolution of this story occurs when Andy, feeling guilty, experiences a dream that changes her. In this dream she holds the heart of the deer, the blood that covers her hands symbolizes her changing from a child into a woman. More symbolism that relates to initiation is the men drinking Jim Bean, the father smoking a cigarette, Charlie cussing, and the fact that sexual subjects embrace Andy. More symbolism is how the mother kept getting placed into the story. In an excerpt from Essay Review; Essay, by Peter Heller, he states, “Mothers are generally unimportant in Kaplan’s tales; they are often dead, gone, or insane.

The story “Battle Royal”, by Ralph Ellison, is another well-known story about the rite of passage. The protagonist in this is an unnamed, young black boy who was Valedictorian of his High School class. Ellison adds the dying words of the boys grandfather to haunt him, and in turn make him a stronger person: “…life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemies country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you