An Adolescent's Journey

Through life, we travel down a yellow brick road, oftentimes meeting friends and foe, whilst dreaming of making our way back home. However, unlike Dorothy, or her friends traveling through Oz, our struggles on this journey as pilgrims to our fate cannot usually be solved by clicking our heels together, saying "There's no place like home." Instead, we must find our lost souls and confirm them into a new being, one with a defined name and role. It is much like purgatory, a time in which one cannot give alms to receive redemption, and where one must make decisions. This journey, our quest for confirmation, is much like that of love in that it is difficult yet cannot be forced into existence. It is difficult to say "Then I defy you, stars!" (5.1.24) when our futures appear to be solidly built, with little room for deviance from the precharted course. It also must be accomplished solely as "each man finds out for himself, in his own way, [that] each man is the world" (Saroyan 130). Adolescence is a time during this pilgrimage when many discover where their navigation system is leading them and who they are to be when they reach that place "like a rainbow after the rain" (Hansberry 151).



This pilgrimage is a difficult journey to attempt, and many are afraid of the process or the outcome. As children evolve into adults, there is a loss of innocence. No longer is one able to act in the same manner or perform the same actions; instead, as a body falls further into the more "mature" world, the individual is expected to perform at a higher level and to conform. To lose this innocence is a difficult procedure and often hurts as it leads to loneliness; so many try not to fall over the cliff into adulthood, or bite from the tree of knowledge as the serpent tells them to. After this experience, many people, like Salinger's Holden Caulfield, try to protect others from the experience by dreaming of becoming the "catcher in the rye." Once thrown over the cliff, a whole new...