What are "thematic issues" in a coming of age novel?

Question

Looking mainly for issues in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'parrot in the Oven'

Answer 1

Looked at from the adult point of view, most "coming of age" novels involve a loss of innocence. This may involve a confrontation with guilt or acceptance of moral responsibility. Or it may refer to a loss of naivete, forsaking childhood fantasies and facing reality for the first time.

However, looked at from the adolescent point of view, the "young adult" novel almost always focuses on alienation. The main character is an "outsider" in the family, community, or society; or the person from whose point of view the story is told comes to undersand an "outsider" or group of "outsiders."

Of course, novels about outsiders almost always depict surrogate familes that adolescents construct for themselves: surrogate fathers or mothers (a wise old man or an earth mother or a "big brother or sister," for example), peer groups or "gangs" that serve as "homes" for the outsider, new intimate relationships, extended families or reconfigured families ("blood brothers" or sisters, racial identity, ethnic, psycho-social, economic, physical or mental or emotional disabilty, religious, vocational, gender orientation, political, military identities, etc.), or perhaps even a new understanding of and relationship with one's actual family.

Coming-of-age novels usually deal with the body--coming to terms with physical changes or limitations, often with sensual or sexual experiences for the first time. They often have one or more characters facing apparently insurmountable obstacles. Adolescents often seek out novels or biographies or memoirs dealing honestly with physical disabilities or mental health breakdowns (quadriplegics, for example, or neuroses, or terminal illness).

Scout, for instance, fits many of these dimensions. She is something of an outsider herself, but most of the characters with whom she is involved are outsiders in one way or another, even her father in her role defending an African American in a racist community. She constructs a "family" among her friends (especially Dill), she has a surrogate mother (Calpurnia), and she comes to a new understanding of her father during the trial. She becomes very sensitive to physical, mental, and emotional differences (culminating in her relationship with Boo Radley).

Her loss of innocence is primarily her having to face the unpleasant realities in her community but also coming to accept moral responsibility for her actions. (In fact, "killing a mockingbird" is the taking of an innocent life, and the figure of speech works both ways: a thoughless deed resulting in the loss of an innocent life and the loss of innocence for the hunter.)

That's what coming of age in a novel is usally like, for that's what coming of age in life is usually like, While we're involved in the transition we are intensely aware of our sense of separation, or alienation, of our loneliness and our efforts to deal with such loneliness. But when we look back on it as an adult we can clearly see our loss of innocence. We killed the mockingbird, didn't we?

Answer 2

Coming of age implies the getting of wisdom by experience. Often the experience is not sought and is sometimes unpleasant. But painfull experience usually has a greater impact and a more lasting effect. Therefore anything which contributes to the evolution of a subject's beliefs and understanding could be described as the theme of or "thematic" in such a novel.

Answer 3

The Graveyard Book by way of Neil Gaiman. Not precisely your traditional coming coming-of-age novel, however I feel that is why I find it irresistible. It's approximately a are living boy residing in a graveyard and being raised by way of ghosts. That and The Catcher within the Rye by way of J.D. Salinger.