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ESSAY
Personalized initiation stories in American 20th Century Literature
There are several points regarding the motif of initiation in American fiction. In the 20Th century, it appears more personalized than in the century before, as the stories are mostly related through a first person narrator. There several popular stories, such as The Catcher in the Rye, The Man Who Was Almost a Man or Drown, all of which must be understood only to represent a number most impressing examples of this type of narrative perspective. ...
The sexual initiation plays an important role in the 20th Century initiation stories. The search for sexual identity is the central topic of various stories, the plots of which always present a teenage protagonist who has to experience sexuality in a negative or positive way before his or her initiation can be accomplished. These tales are often named slice-of-life-stories, because they often leave their readers with an open end, and thus only offer a short glimpse at their characters’ lives. Moreover, flashbacks and episodes framed by the main plot are very typical of the 20th century initiation theme. ...
One of the main and perpetually recurring topics of the initiation genre is the protagonist’s sexual initiation. ... His initiation is not complete yet, because he is unable to deal with his sexual inclination. ...
In general, slice-of-life-stories are short stories which often contain issues of identity-search. ... All of the stories present the plight of the adolescent.
The most typical and, as I may humbly assume, most important slice-of-life short stories we can read are I Want to Know Why and I´m a Fool by Sherwood Anderson, The Killers by Ernest Hemingway and The Man who Was Almost a Man by Richard Wright.
Approximate Word count = 1326
Approximate Pages = 5.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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