Examples Of Coming Of Age In A Painted House

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The Winds of Change: A Coming of Age Story Coming of age can be described as a difficult and tedious process. It can happen at any age and it can even come without warning or expectation. Many individuals may welcome it while others have no desire to go through with it at all. There are even moments when change is forced on the individual and they are given an opportunity to embrace it and grow. John Grisham was able to illustrate such a process in the life of a young boy in the novel, A Painted House. In this novel, a seven year old boy named Luke goes through one of the most depressing and distressing years of his life. This story is told from Luke’s point of view and it describes the process that his family had to go through in order to …show more content…

They end up losing two of the strongest workers that they have. This does not matter in the end because they lose all of their crops and even have some damage done to the family home due to floods from a series of rain storms. The storms destroy their livelihood, however, they also wash away all of their problems in order to help the family move forward. Families during this time period were dependent on weather that they could often be ruined by a sudden mishap or by Mother Nature itself. This would place more of a debt burden on them and they would be forced to work another year even further behind then the preceding one. Many families became trapped by this and it could be described as being reminiscent of the Great Depression. The only option for these families was to move north or to the cities and embrace the industrialization of the country. They ultimately decide that they would move north in order to have a better life and save up …show more content…

The floods had washed away their old lives and the painting of their home represented them creating a new life that they would begin in the north. Luke’s mother was even pregnant and that symbolized a new life being brought into the world. This could have even been a reflection of their new lives that would begin in the north. The grandparents were both happy and sad to see their family leaving them. They knew that they would have better lives up north and be able to be more successful and comfortable in the future. This shows how the country and its citizens were changing during this time period and the cities were in a period of growth while the countryside was going through a waning period. The country had been thrown into a period of modernization after decades of social turmoil, warfare and economic depression. This was the beginning of a great change in the country at this time and a marked change into one of the most powerful industrial and service industries on the

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