All posts from here on will be for Coming of Age Novel

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Criticizing Victoria Lynn Schmidt's Model of the Heroine's Journey

    The first main problem with Victoria Lynn Schmidt's Heroine's journey is that while it may be better than the Hero's journey, it still has some pretty stringent elements. This is mainly due to the emphasis on the heroine undergoing a spiritual change, as there are many stories that fit the model decently but don't have much of a spiritual change and something like The Hunger Games come to mind. This as well as the emphasis on a betrayal at the beginning make it much harder to apply broadly. However, it is possible that it wasn't entirely meant to be a monomyth in the same way as the hero's journey and seems to be designed to be a bit more specific. However, the "Descent", "Eye of The Storm", and "Death" Stages do work in a more broad variety of stories so it was definitely meant to loosely fit most stories that at least feature a heroine. It is also less restrictive than Maureen Murdock's model which focuses too much on gen...
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The BB Guns In Gangsters

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     Throughout the chapter Gangsters in Sag Harbor  the entire "gang" becomes more or less intoxicated with the BB guns, and the whole chapter revolves around them and the eventual fight. There seems to be a number of reasons why Benji ultimately gets shot in the eye and why the guns are so appealing to them however, ihe first of which being American gun culture in general. I'm pretty sure this wasn't as much of a social issue in the 1980's as it is today but it feels like an important background factor for all of this. They all succumb to it too, even though Benji brushes it off at first thinking that guns were below them (pg. 151). On page 157 when he actually shoots one of them he admits that it was fun though the satisfaction was more from finding another way to spend their time.     The constant use of gendered language in "Gangsters" also seems to contribute to their obsession with the BB guns. There's his reference to "the Man Isle"...
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Is the Bell Jar Really Gone?

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    One of the more important questions that the ending of the The Bell Jar  leaves unanswered is to what extent the bell jar Esther felt trapped by is really gone. Esther herself even acknowledges this, "How did I know that someday … the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?" (Plath, 241). It's unclear to if it's even entirely gone by this point, and it's possible it could just be replaced by another one. Esther also mentions on page 238 that the other girls at college were under a different kind of bell jar. Esther's college experience has been one where she felt very trapped by the pressure on her to succeed and to have a plan for her future, so in that way the entire academic world has been somewhat of a bell jar for her. However, she seems to be more or less back to her old self by the end of the book, but with a different outlook on the world.     Adding to the fear of the bell jar is Buddy's comment about who Esther wo...
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