In S.E. Hinton’s That Was Then, This is Now, Bryon matures throughout the novel and it influences his choices and actions in the absurd decisions he makes, such as reporting his “brother,” Mark, to the police and in his relationship with Cathy. The “coming of age” of Bryon is in his analysis and recall of everything he did, as a teenager. However, other themes are influenced by this theme, such as maturity, alcohol and drugs. Unfortunately, Bryon is going to have to make a decision whether he is going to surround himself with people who give him a positive influence or negative influence. In the beginning of the novel, Bryon does not know what he wants to be when he grows up; he is only focused about the present. However, as the story progresses, he realizes that there is more to life than violence and drugs. At the end of the novel, Bryon is uncertain whether he made the correct verdicts. Bryon is going to have to make an important decision that symbolizes the beginning of his adulthood.
Throughout the novel, the main theme of the story is Bryon’s “coming of age” as he matures from a twelve-year-old to a seventeen-year-old. Bryon recalls several past events as a thirteen-year-old and he later criticizes his actions. Bryon learns everything on his own because his mother is busy with work and his father has divorced his mother. Therefore, Bryon is forced to learn through experiences he encounters on the street. Fortunately, Mark, Bryon’s best friend, is in a similar situation as Bryon his mother and father both died in a gun fight. Bryon’s mother allows Mark to live with them, and this marks the beginning of their “brotherhood.” In the beginning of the novel, Bryon and Mark do everything together; however, as the novel progresses...
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...l when Angela’s brother beats up Bryon, at Terry Jones’ house because Mark cut her hair while Bryon is in the car. When Mark arrives Terry Jones’ house he finds Bryon lying on steps severely beaten. When Bryon sees Mark he is quickly comforted by him and Mark informs him that he is going to get revenge on the Shepards. However, Bryon informs him to not provoke anything else because then they will be in an endless conflict with one another. Mark is unable to comprehend what Bryon just tells him because it is so unorthodox of Bryon. Bryon recalls his confrontation with Mike and understands what he means by “forgiving them for what they had done.” (62) This marks one of the few moments where Bryon is maturing enough to understand that violence is not the solution to everything.
Works Cited
Hinton, S. E. That Was Then, This Is Now. New York: Viking, 1971. Print.
That was Then, This is Now by S.E. Hinton Book Report 1. What is the difference between a. and a Title: That was Then. This is Now. 2. What is the difference between a'smar Author: S. E. Hinton 3.
In the high criminal neighborhood where the other Wes lived, people who live there need a positive role model or a mentor to lead them to a better future. Usually the older family members are the person they can look up to. The other Wes’s mother was not there when the other Wes felt perplexed about his future and needed her to support and give him advises. Even though the other Wes’s mother moved around and tried to keep the other Wes from bad influences in the neighborhood, still, the other Wes dropped out of school and ended up in the prison. While the author Wes went to the private school every day with his friend Justin; the other Wes tried to skip school with his friend Woody. Moore says, “Wes had no intention of going to school. He was supposed to meet Woody later – they were going to skip school with some friends, stay at Wes’s house, and have a cookout” (59). This example shows that at the time the other Wes was not interested in school. Because Mary was busy at work, trying to support her son’s education, she had no time and energy to look after the other Wes. For this reason, she did not know how the other Wes was doing at school and had no idea that he was escaping school. She missed the opportunities to intervene in her son’s life and put him on the right track. Moreover, when the author was in the military school, the other Wes was dealing drugs to people in the streets and was already the father of a child. The incident that made the other Wes drop out of school was when he had a conflict with a guy. The other Wes was dating with the girl without knowing that she had a boyfriend. One night, her boyfriend found out her relationship with the other Wes and had a fight with him. During the fight, the other Wes chased the guy and shot him. The guy was injured and the other Wes was arrested
...he class barriers that exist in society and the differences between these different groups. She comes to see the differences and the similarities between her life and that of the two boys.
The writer begins the story with Bryon and Mark (both 16 years old) being the best of friends like brothers that are involved in gang fights, hustling people and not having to follow any rules. As the story continues, the writer shows us how both boys begins to take a different path from each other. When Bryon gets beat up for covering for what Mark done to Angela., Bryon doesn’t want Mark to get even with the people that hurt him. “I don’t want to keep this up, this getting-even jazz. It’s stupid and I’m sick of it and it keeps going in circles” (pg 129). The writer also show us th...
The author clearly shows how his childhood effected his adulthood, making in a living example of what he is writing about allowing the audience to more easily trust what he is writing about. Instead of using factually evidence from other dysfunctional family incidences, the author decides to make it more personal, by using his own life and comparing family ideas of the past to the present.
Ren’s story begins in St. Anthony’s Orphanage where he has no biological family. Ren is surrounded with the other young boys where he views Brom and Itchy as “his only friends” (Tinti 8). Ren’s one dream living at the orphanage is to one day be adopted and have a family. He knows that his chances are limited because of his lack of an arm. Once Benjamin comes into the orphanage and chooses Ren, he is surprised that he will finally have the family he’s been dreaming about. As Ren and Benjamin travel to a destination unknown by Ren, Benjamin paints a picture of Ren’s past. He tells him about their mother and father and how “they were murdered” (48). Ren believes that Benjamin is his brother and because his dream has come true it makes him vulnerable and willing to do whatever Benjamin wants him to do. Ren ends up helping Tom and Benjamin take dead, “fresh”, bodies from a cemetery to Doctor Milton “at night, to the door that leads to the basement” in exchange for money (134). After this scene, Ren’s morals begin to vary significantly from where he began. Tom, Benjamin, and other people he comes in contact with affect the way he views life and how he judges others. Ren becomes a different person because of his environment and his expectations in life change, making him an unhappy boy in the end. Hannah Tinti gives an analogy at the end of the novel comparing Ren’s search for a family to a game
due to weak funding in the educational system. Milloy makes the readers wonder why certain schools do not live up to the standards of others in nearby towns. Although a play ground was built for this school, Maurice may never be able to play on it because he must learn how to walk, talk, and eat all over again. People take forgranted the daily rituals of life and if put in the shoes of a parent of this boy, one would realize how tragic this accident was and even the effects the education system has.
Each and every person will go through a coming of age experience sometime in their life. Those experiences can come in different forms. But, each coming of age experience ends up shaping us to become a mature adult. In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee tells a coming of age story through Scout Finch, an aging girl’s point of view. Her brother, Jem Finch who experiences coming of age before Scout, realizes that being an adult was not what he hoped. Jem recognizes a different perspective of bravery from Mrs.Dubose, a vile, elderly woman’s perspective. In chapter 11, Harper Lee uses literary elements such as character, conflict, and setting to establish Jem’s new outlook on life.
As the book goes on Chief Bromden begins to realize that McMurphy is not actually the monster they claim him to be. He realizes that ...
The events in the novel are predicated upon the death of Joel's mother. The account of his mother's death and the upheaval it caused for him (p 10 ) is more poignant to a reader who has experienced the untimely death of a parent than to one who has not. The reader who has experienced the loss can identify with everyone “always smiling” and with the unexplainable changes in one's own behavior toward others as one adjusts to the emptiness.
Growing up, Charlie faced two difficult loses that changed his life by getting him admitted in the hospital. As a young boy, he lost his aunt in a car accident, and in middle school, he lost his best friend who shot himself. That Fall, Charlie walks through the doors his first day of highschool, and he sees how all the people he used to talk to and hang out with treat him like he’s not there. While in English class, Mr. Anderson, Charlie’s English teacher, notices that Charlie knew the correct answer, but he did not want to speak up and let his voice be heard. As his first day went on, Charlie met two people that would change named Sam and Patrick who took Charlie in and helped him find himself. When his friends were leaving for college, they took one last ride together in the tunnel and played their favorite song. The movie ends with Charlie reading aloud his final letter to his friend, “This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story, you are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder, when you were listening to that song” (Chbosky). Ever since the first day, Charlie realized that his old friends and classmates conformed into the average high schooler and paid no attention to him. Sam and Patrick along with Mr. Anderson, changed his views on life and helped him come out of his shell. Charlie found a
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Acceptance of who we are plays a large part in the overall theme of “rite of passage” in the story. The young girl is opposed to the thought of working for her mother at the beginning, but eventually comes to a realization that it is her pre-determined fate to fit the mould of the gender stereotype. Through the girl’s hardships, she accepts the fact that her younger brother, Laird, is now the man that his father needs for help, and she takes her place in womanhood. The story embodies gender identity and stereotypes, as a young child moves into adulthood. The fact that our rite of passage is unavoidable proves that we must all go through our own journeys to find our own true identity.
The novel starts with Douglas embracing the beauty of summer and his young unrestricted life. Almost immediately, the reader is presented with the idea of the magic of life and childhood wonder. At the beginning of the summer, Douglas proposes that he will write about summer rituals and write down his reflections on those rituals. Douglas’ summer is very eventful. Leo Auffmann, the town jeweler, decides to invent a Happiness Machine. Although he fails, he learns from his failure that his family was Happiness Machine all along. Douglas discovers that adults and children are two different races, and that old people were never children although they have a past. Douglas’ friend Charlie takes John and Douglas to meet Colonel Freeleigh, a very old man whom they call a Time Machine because he tells stories that have the power to transport them back...
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