The World's a Headmaster: Black Swan Green as Coming-of-Age
"The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! [. . .] Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and thing, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps." (Mitchell, 315).
Instead of childhood to adulthood, Black Swan Green narrows in on the transition from childhood to adolescence through the journey of Jason Taylor navigating his thirteenth year of life. Despite Jason being younger than the Bildungsroman protagonists we are familiar with, his story is a classic coming-of-age arc. He begins the novel unsure of his place in his community and hiding his true self, disillusioned by the society of teenage boys and struggling to fit in despite his stammer. Throughout the course of the story, he faces many trials and grows in his relationships with friends and family, and gains courage, maturity, and wisdom.
I found Jason's analogy comparing life to a headmaster and a flight of stairs to be one of the most important and accurate depictions of the coming-of-age journey. In reality, coming-of-age is very rarely linear, and Black Swan Green expresses this rocky path of character progression. Jason learns many lessons throughout his one-year journey, but it would be unrealistic of him to immediately gain the wisdom imparted to him through these many lessons. For example, a big theme of the novel is Jason finally leaning against the mob mentality, but we see him falling back over and over again, "tripping over his hidden step." However, once he finally gains his self-realization and maturity, he overcomes this hidden step.
The end of the novel articulates another important aspect of coming-of-age; that it is a journey that doesn't end in a perfect state of enlightenment, and that there is always more of a journey to undertake. By the end of the novel, Jason has a clearer vision of himself and society, and is ready to start his next journey with newfound wisdom and bravery. However, his stammer has not been fully resolved, and he is still only thirteen and is going to face many more "hidden steps" as he continues his journey from childhood to adulthood. In a way, he is at the beginning again: he is about to start at a new school and will have to go through many of the same challenges. However, what he has gained from this coming-of-age journey will guide him through all of his further experiences.
Despite the age difference between Jason and the other protagonists we read about, the themes of his coming-of-age experience applies to all of the novels we have read so far. This novel and the class in general have definitely changed my view of coming-of-age as one transition--instead, I have come to see it as the series of non-linear journeys that shape one's experience of growing out of childhood and into adulthood.
Great Post! Jason is the youngest protagonist we've had but it seems like his coming of age was really impactful for him. I totally agree with your points about Jason and his maturing of himself with the hidden steps. I think your post is well crafted and shows a lot about the message and journey of the novel.
ReplyDeleteGreat thinking, I completely agree. Coming of age is often for and about late teens, but it really could happen at any age. Jason's small points of critical thinking and realization (marriage, vietnam, bullying) don't even come close to solving his current and future problems, but they are still significant.
ReplyDeleteI really like the distinction of the transition from childhood to being a teenager from childhood to adulthood. We definitely see Jason fall back into the same cycles before learning from his mistakes, and I think his realizing this is very telling of how much he's matured. Also, the end of the book; he is going to start all over at a new school with a new Ross Wilcox, etc. but he'll have the wisdom he gained from his time in Black Swan Green, showing how each "non-linear journey" someone goes on has implications in the next.
ReplyDeleteI also really like the ways that this novel, despite the many significant advances and epiphanies Jason experiences over the course of the story, continues to reflect a kind of two-steps-forward, one-step-back dynamic. So he learns an important set of lessons around his experience with Hugo in "Relatives"--culiminating in the smoking episode, where he sees his cousin laughing at him--and it seems he's learning an important lesson about "coolness" and making an effort to appear cool. But then in the next chapter, we see him smoothly *faking* smoking a cigarette when he's waiting for the fight to start--he's still trying to use smoking as a facade of "cool," despite what he's learned via Hugo. And then in "Spooks" he has no hesitation about using Hugo's idea for the "Cherry-Knocking," if it might impress these hairy barbarians--despite his deep moral qualms about the prank, and despite the fact that he is trying to impress Dawn Madden (which, in "Bridle Path," he seemed to have learned is not worth the effort). He does eventually make remarkable progress in these and other areas--we never see him do the fake-smoking move again--but we do see him trip over the same step repeatedly, even after he seems to have learned about the obstacle.
ReplyDeleteJason's path from angst to overcoming his own hurdles is certainly cyclical at times and most certain nonlinear. Certainly, I think this entire coming-of-age process doesn't have a demarcated beginning and end; that this process will continuously have hurdles to overcome and expectations to shatter. The numerous different things he learns from each difficulty build on each other and ultimately build him into a whole person.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this book definitely felt different from the others in part due to the young age Jason is at compared to the others. Even though this is the case, I still find his coming-of-age really satisfying. For example, even though Holden is older than Jason his coming-of-age leaves a lot of questions to be asked regarding his future.
ReplyDeleteI was definitely skeptical at first about Black Swan Green being a coming of age novel because it only focuses on one year of a pretty young age, however I agree that the story actually does a great job at representing coming of age. One aspect I really understood was how David Mitchell showed the affect your parents can have on your coming of age, especially in the last chapter, when we see Jason's scope of the world widen away from the more childish concerns that occupied the rest of the novel. I also definitely agree that this is only showing the start of Jason's journey, and that he still has more coming of age to do. However, I do feel like his young age could show that coming of age takes different amounts of time for different people, and that maybe he is becoming more mature sooner than the older kids he looked up to in his town were.
ReplyDeleteI love the points you bring up in this post- specifically about the ending. This is a classic coming of age novel narrative, but it's not like Jason comes out at the end fully enlightened. In fact, in the last scene of the book, Jason is crying over his parents divorce and him moving. He's still struggling with a lot of things, and is in no way fully developed or content as a person. However, as Julia says while she comforts him, "this isn't the end." This isn't the end of Jason's life, nor his coming of age arc. Great post Priya!
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