'Leveling up' in Coming of Age stories

I know the appeal of coming-of-age is to a character mature from adolescence into adulthood but then I find this quote from a blog:

You know there is a danger to portraying coming-of-age as being something like leveling up but adulthood and maturity is much more complex than that. I am in my late twenties but I feel as though that I am seventeen and I feel like I am going through high school despite being a college student. I thought I was going to be mature when I become 21 but I am learning that physical age isn't a sole indicator of maturity. There is also this:

It isn't an easy task and its even easier to fall back into old habits despite making progress. Not everyone matures at the same rate and not everyone goes through these neat little character arcs that we find in books. Still, is there a temptation to portraying character development and bildungsroman stories as 'leveling up' for the final boss? What stories play with this trope?

Well, to use another video game metaphor: the issue with coming of age is that there generally isn't a "leveling up fanfare", or if it does exist, it actually is fanfare of some other event, that is associated with coming of age, but not actually coming of age (e.g. turning 16, 18, 21, getting a job, a "real job", a car, a house or apartment, a statistically significant other, etc.).

Think of video games: whenever you gain a level, beat stage, or finish a battle, there's generally a big announcement of that fact. It's clear, it's obvious. But life doesn't do that, and therein lies the rub.

Then, of course, there is the question of what "coming of age" actually means: it can either mean an increase in maturity from a pre-adult level to adult level (which just begs for recursing down the rabbit hole) or a recognition by others/society of said increase, with the increased responsibilities that go with it.

edited 7th Jun '15 1:56:00 PM by Sharur

I know character development isn't just leveling up or even beating a level but still what is a coming of age story?

A very wide category, is what it is. In general, the main character starts out wide-eyed and innocent as a child, and ends up having grown and matured, one step closer to adulthood (however that's measured). There's a hundred variations on that theme.

The story that immediately comes to mind is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

In most Coming of Age stories, the character at the start is supposed to be on the brink of maturity anyway. The whole story is about them crossing the threshold into the adult world, taking on new responsibilities, new challenges, and new experiences. The character is supposed to be different at the end compared to the beginning, usually by being stronger, smarter, wiser and more confident.

If you're complaining about stories having character arcs, then I don't know what to tell you. That's just the nature of fiction. If you're going to complain about that, then maybe fiction itself isn't for you?

Now that, dear GAP, is a great question.

So ... what exactly is it?

As silly as it sounds, it is not a story about someone becoming a person of age. Age, though often linked to maturity, doesn't actually have anything to do with it. What does have to do with maturity, however, are experience and wisdom, both of which are accumulated as we get through life, as we accumulate our age too, so to say. What also does have to do with maturity is our ability to withstand the pressure of others' expectations, our mental resilience, and our adaptability to what the situations we get into throw at us, though the latter one is close enough to experience itself that some people count it as the same. In a way it is also acceptance, of ourselves and the place we have in the world, and the ability to hide it when we cannot accept something. And the ability to create instead of breaking, alongside the willpower not to break things not matter how much we'd want to do that.

So, what is a coming-of-age story?

Crudely and mayhap not fully accurately, but certainly close enough, it is a story that is basically a close-up study of a character who lacks one or more of the above elements, whose development is what drives the plot. It is a story where the villain is a part of the hero, not someone or something else; where the conflict is of importance because of what it means to the protagonist rather than how important it truly is, and where the very final confrontation at the end of the very last dungeon is not an epic battle but a silent realisation and a choice, a choice very different from the one that would have been made at the beginning of the story.

It is a story about a struggle, maybe to change or maybe to stay the same, or maybe even a struggle to see something when one couldn't have noticed it before. It is about that vague moment when, though nobody had told them, nothing had shown it to them, and the hero may not even realise it themselves, the hero just became a little more of an "adult", a little more mature, wiser, richer in experiences.

It is a story that does not have to start with a character who is hopelessly naive and basically a sweet child. Those characters do work, and some could even say that they work best—and as I have not done an in-depth study, I can neither agree nor disagree so feel free to judge it yourself—but they are not the only kind of character that works. And albeit some would think it inconceivable, it is possible for someone who is already physically an adult (however much or little that means, for the very idea of measuring mental and emotional maturity by using their physical maturity as the measuring stick is simply laughable) and had been one for a long time, to be the main character of a coming-of-age story. Because sure, why not? That person, too, might have problems caused by lacking one or more of the aforementioned traits linked with maturity, and be going on what we would call a journey of self-realisation.

Maturity itself, and "mental adulthood" likewise, are not binary states. Much of it is a matter of perception—our perception, others' perception, and even the distortion that mars what people see and warps it all—and that is in a large part based on how the culture they grew up in, they "matured" in, had shaped them. For what one culture deems as mature, another might deem as a child's trait. There is no "level up" nor a message about it, no notification that one is an adult now and wasn't one a second ago; there are no checkpoints, no milestones, no thresholds. You can't always check and you don't always know.

Maturity is in a warrior who, not knowing his "level" nor "levels" of anyone and anything else, picks up his sword or axe or spear and marches to defend those around him because he can do it more than they can, not necessarily better or more gracefully or whatever else but simply because he can and it has to be done. It is in a student who works after school to support his siblings because that is something he can do for them and nobody else is willing to even though they could. It is in a woman who swears off ever being a mother in spite of wanting to have a child because everyone in her family had been a horrible parent and she recognises the signs of it in herself. It is in a person who listens and comforts someone they don't really know, just because the other person needs it and nobody they know is willing to provide it.

And yet, every single of the examples above, there are people out there who would call that immature.

So this genre, so warped its boundaries by what it is seen with, can be quite wide. Many a plot can be used as a central part of a coming-of-age story, and though some will disagree with me, I say no plot is inherently better or worse here if the execution of the plot is good.

But yes, essentially, it is about growing up. Growing up in some way, out of many possible ways, but not necessarily in the way.

And, of course, I am just rambling so feel free to disagree.

edited 7th Jun '15 4:20:08 PM by Kazeto

In any Coming of Age Story the character at the start is supposed to be on the brink of maturity. In Real Life the maturing is very slow but in fiction by the end of a story the character has basically leveled up like a graduation. In fact the story could be centered around a character graduating, ready for the new responsibilities that await.

So, you probably wouldn't write a Coming of Age story about hitting puberty, or graduating high school, or getting your driver's license.

Those can be stories in themselves, but they must be well-supported by the context in which they exist. The shift is internal, and it is up to the individual (character, or author) which events would be significant.

There could be a coming-of-age story about a family of assassins where the Rite of Passage seems to be taking somebody's life (supported by the culture of the family) and this can be a profound existential contemplation about the nature of death...but the real Coming of Age is the main character realizing that his or her value system is so different from the family's that this main character is not going to kill anybody anymore at all.

I think the problem with "leveling up" is that it's not internal, but externally dictated in the story what age is coming because of a contrived event. There's no internal change, there's just hollow societal reinforcement.

edited 7th Jun '15 8:55:15 PM by Faemonic

It's worth keeping in mind that a character can become more mature, wiser and more realistic... while still getting kicked in the teeth by their circumstances and, relative to their starting point, slipping down instead of 'levelling up'.

Coming of age implies an internal development, significant maturation, but not necessarily straightforward personal empowerment.

If Coming of Age stories are all about internal development, then what does that mean for characters who develop in a different manner than what is usually expected? And does the cahracter arc only have to go one way?

Think of it this way: at the beginning the character is standing at the crossroads, and character development equals moving.

The character develops in only one way, yes, but one way out of many, and though some of those ways would not be ... let's say "desired", they are all just as valid; they all are character development of some sort. Some behaviours aren't equivalent to actually moving, they aren't character development but rather stagnation instead, that is true. And though some people would say it's hard to see the difference, I say it's actually easy enough, because the stagnation only occurs if the character behaves differently but there's no internal change; in those cases, the response to the current event is different but there's no lesson learned nor any progress.

For example, let's say that you take a standard young warrior, who happens to not want to fight, and that's the "problem" he starts with at the beginning of his coming-of-age story. It would be stagnation if he stubbornly continued on saying the same thing, or started running away from combat, or if he fought someone because he had no other choice but later went back to his way, because nothing really changes. But other possibilities, well ... if he worked to find a way to help without fighting then it counts. If he fought against someone and that made him realise why exactly he was avoiding combat and then, whatever it was, he spent time trying to make this not a problem, it counts. If he ran away and became a merchant or a blacksmith or whatever else because it's something he at least can do and he accepts that he can't fight, it counts. And so on, and so on.

So yeah, it's about changes, and maturity. It's not about the actual ability to be the best at whatever or about changing in the way people expect you to be. Heck, some characters' coming-of-age arcs are explicitly about them realising that they can't be the way people expect them to be and becoming the sort of people they, rather than those around them, want to be.

Also, I seem to be rambling again. I hope it is at least marginally helpful.

It does help but one more question, what directions can coming of age stories take their characters?

What directions did you have in mind?

What if a character doesn't move forward but kind of regresses or even zig zagged between maturity and/or childishness.

Depends on what the change is supposed to be about, then. If it's about the character's ability to act in a given way that is perceived as "mature", but not about the character's choice to act that way, then yes, it does count.

However, if the character genuinely regresses to the state the same as was before the change, then it is very likely that what you have is stagnation hidden beneath an illusion of change, which most likely wouldn't count. Most likely, for it still remains a possibility that whatever the character regresses about is not the problem that their coming-of-age episode was about.

Can you give an example of this regression because I want to say that you can't have a Coming of Age Story where the character is regressing.

It depends whether the regression is outward or inward.

Inward (internal/maturity-related) regression is the opposite of coming of age.

A good example of outward regression masking inward growth is A Series of Unfortunate Events. In that story, the three young protagonists are treated as capable and mature by their parents. When the parents die, every adult treats the young protagonists as helpless or immature children. Their outward (i.e. in the eyes of society) childishness and powerlessness contrasts with their inward growth towards independence and self-sufficiency.

Sorry about the awkward, improvised terminology I'm using, but I hope it's clear what I mean.

edited 8th Jun '15 11:32:23 PM by editerguy

I can only name LSP and Lemongrab from Adventure time, it seemed like they were making progress but they also seemed to regress in later episodes.

The issue with the levelling up metaphor isn't just internal vs external but also that leveling up gives the impression that the event is completed (at least at that stage).

Being in my early twenties I don't have many years of development experience to call upon but those I have are still vivid. In my personal experience "coming of age" doesn't feel like your reaching a defined point. Sure I've matured a lot in the last 5 years and I've definitely had moments where I've overcome problems but there was never a time when I suddenly felt that yes now I was an adult, because with each problem overcome new issues were highlighted.

When using coming of age stories it's important not to treat it like a level up where you overcome one issue and now all your problems can be easily solved. In real life mental maturation is much more a gradual process and continues throughout life so there isn't really a level up to aim for. At best you develop as a person but really your still the same level just with a new skill unlocked.

edited 9th Jun '15 5:01:26 AM by aoide12