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Coming-of-Age

 All posts from this point on are for Coming-of-Age novel

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The Impact of Deviating From the Hero's Journey

In the billions of stories that exist on this planet, it is not surprising how many of them deviate from the structure laid out by Joseph Campbell in the Hero's Journey. However, what is surprising is the lasting popularity of stories that feature flat characters (who are supposed to be the bane of writers everywhere). In fact, character-driven stories have only been popular relatively recently — think of how modern fairytale rewrites like  Cinder  or  Land of Stories  treat the characters compared to the originals. Somehow, despite the two-dimensional nature of their protagonists, many stories with little character growth are still wildly popular. By the time of Joseph Campbell, character development was considered an integral part of a good story. And yet, characters like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty have stayed in the cultural consciousness despite their lack of personality or character growth. The power of not having character growth like in the Hero's Jour...
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Esther Greenwood and the Miraculous Recovery

Even before Esther is officially deemed fit to be released from the asylum, she knows that the bell jar that had been suffocating her before had lifted. Although she doesn't know for certain whether it will ever return, she feels newly empowered to continue with life. The reason for this is that she no longer has the looming pressure of people expecting her to be great in the future. These expectations that people had before of Esther were a major part of why she attempted to commit suicide. Esther was a high-achieving, straight-A student who was able to go to college through the many scholarships that she earned. She is able to skip being graded on a required class because of everyone's belief that she would have aced the course anyway. As a result of her previous achievements, she begins feeling pressure to be great even after graduating college, which she's not sure how to do in the absence of grades and papers. During her New York internship, when Esther realizes for th...
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Phony Learning

The inciting incident of the book Catcher in the Rye is Holden Caufield flunking out of his prep school for the fourth time. From the beginning, it is obvious that Holden's poor performance in school is deliberate; despite the excuses that he gives to his teachers, he often reads educational books, and is also very good at writing, at odds to his poor performance in History. Despite writing a terrible essay for Mr. Spencer (which is part of the reason he is being kicked out of Pencey), he is able to come up with a thoughtful composition for Stradlater (which he wouldn't receive any credit on). He does poorly in school because he only wants to learn things for the sake of learning-- he doesn't want to learn it for 'phony' reasons like recognition from teachers or having good grades. Holden only displays his knowledge when it won't bring him any sort of recognition or praise so that he can make sure that he is staying true to his ideals.  Holden sees doing work t...
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