A few days ago in class we had a writing prompt to talk about what coming of age meant to us. Growing up in a large extended Jewish family, coming of age is a defined moment. For a Jewish boy the Bar Mitzvah is the key event that represents his ascension into adulthood. There are lots of religious things that come along with being an adult but I won't go into that. But the thing about coming of age in Jewish religion and culture, is that from the moment you are born people are talking about it and preparing you for it. You don't really get to pick when it is, it just happens at one Sabbath when you are thirteen. And once its over, BOOM, its like you're part of a whole different club. People look at you different and you're expected to do things you've never had to do before. It can be stressful with all the new found responsibilities, but its also really exciting.
Stephen Dedalus, in Portrait I suppose isn't as lucky as I was (or depending on how you look at it maybe he had it better). In his life so far, there hasn't been one day where he's come of age in the eyes of the world. For his parents, it seems that once he returned from boarding school and was allowed to sit at the Christmas dinner table for the first time, he has come of age. He's expected to sit and eat politely, yet when he tries to act like he understands all the political rhetoric being thrown around the table his father turns to him and says, "What are you laughing at, you little puppy, you?" (27) Stephen takes another step towards coming of age when he leads a gang of boys over the summer, but I still couldn't say he's come of age. I have a feeling that throughout the book there will never be a point where the reader can say "This is the moment where Stephen has come of age," instead it will be a gradual change that will be hard to notice until the end, when all of a sudden we see a matured Stephen who has certainly come of age and are forced to wonder when we missed it.
I usually think of America as a place where coming of age is a blurred threshold for most, but I think it's interesting that the Jewish subculture has a much more definitive right of passage. Your descriptions of being given new responsibilities and being perceived in a different light depict coming of age as something that the adults in your life brought you into. I agree that Stephen Dedalus's coming of age will be a much more gradual change. I think it's at least in part because he has to figure these things out for himself. Without being given a moment when he can come of age "in the eyes of the world," it may take him longer to come of age for himself, and yet longer to persuade others that he has entered the realm of adulthood.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested to hear more about whether the changes you felt after the bar mitzvah (in terms of how you were/are treated by your peers and elders within the Jewish community) also extend outside that community--do you feel like more of a capable and self-possessed adult in school, or other social situations, or just generally out in the world after your very specific rite of passage? Do you feel more prepared for your coming-of-age more generally as a result?
ReplyDeleteAnd when reading _Portrait_, keep in mind that we're not just looking at a character's coming of age in a general sense (although that's part of it)--it's a more specific case of a young man deciding/discovering that he's an "artist," and the particular challenges of definining himself in this way within (or apart from) his wider culture.
In terms of within the Jewish community there was a palpable change among how I was treated by all but my closest friends. For them I was still just Chas but for the adults and especially the kids younger than me there was a different tone they used when they would talk to me. I think being a little cocky thirteen year old I felt for the next few months that I was more of an adult than before because of my Bar Mitzvah but that feeling soon vanished once I started coming here and saw seniors walking by me in the halls. I suppose I may be a little more prepared to come of age than others, but the main difference is that like people brought up in class there isn't a specific event that "makes" someone come of age in American society, which is what my experience was, so I doubt that experience will translate very well.
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