copperF ieLd (1849–50) and Great expectations
(1860–61); Horatio Alger, Jr.’s Ragged Dick; or,
Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks (1868);
Louisa May Alcott’s LittLe woMen (1869);
Mark Twain’s adventures oF huckLeberry Finn
(1884); James Joyce’s a portrait oF the artist
as a younG Man (1916); and J. D. Salinger’s The
catcher in the rye (1951). The popularity of
this narrative has continued into the late 20th and
early 21st centuries, as shown in critically acclaimed
books such as Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of
Carolina (1993) and Jon Krakauer’s 1996 account of
the life and death of Chris McCandless in Into the
Wild, and through popular culture texts, such as J. K.
Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
While there is agreement on a standard work-
ing definition of a coming-of-age narrative, there
is little agreement among scholars on the constitu-
ent elements of these narratives. James Hardin, a
theorist of genre studies, argues that there can be
no agreement about the elements of a coming-of-
age narrative because of the various meanings of
the word Bildung in German. While most scholars
interpret the word’s meaning as “formation,” Hardin
contends that this interpretation is unique to a series
of 18th- and 19th-century novels, and to use that
term and its meaning for an examination of 20th-
and 21st-century novels is to take it out of its proper
context. Other interpretations of the German word
Bildung, such as initiation, education, and building,
have served to further complicate understanding of
the coming-of-age narrative. In addition to a debate
over the origin of the term, other scholars argue over
the age group of protagonists coming of age in these
texts. Most 18th- and 19th-century protagonists
featured in these novels came of age in their mid-
to-late teenage years. Throughout the 20th century,
however, the range in years for a coming-of-age
narrative widened from this age group to include
protagonists in their early to mid-20s. It is for this
reason that the genre studies scholar Barbara White
limits the definition of a coming-of-age narrative to
focus on protagonists between the ages of 12 and
- Additionally, in the latter part of the 20th cen-
tury, the works of anthropologists, such as Arnold
van Gennup and Margaret Mead, have added to
the debate over the elements of a coming-of-age
narrative. Through their research in rites of passage
and social development and structure, the works
of anthropologists such as van Gennup and Mead
allow scholars to examine the sociocultural implica-
tions of these narratives.
It is the sociocultural implications that cause
the most debate among scholars. Indeed, since a
coming-of-age narrative is dependent on a quest
for an adult identity, this narrative is closely linked
to other areas of identity development, such as
gender, race, social class, and national identity
(see nationalism). As Kenneth Millard argues, a
recurring element of the coming-of-age narrative
is the way in which a protagonist’s adult identity is
framed by historical events and points of origin and
conditioned by social obligations and expectations.
Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn serves as an
example of this theory. In the novel, a young Huck
accompanies Jim, a runaway slave, on a trip down
the Mississippi River to reach the free North. The
novel’s climax occurs when Jim is caught by slave
catchers, and Huck must make a decision between
informing Miss Watson, Jim’s owner, about Jim’s
location or attempting to free Jim from his bondage.
In his decision, Huck must balance the social obliga-
tion of returning “property” to its rightful owner and
his own conscience—during his trip, Huck has come
to see Jim not as a piece of property but as a human.
Ironically, Huck makes the decision to “go to hell”
by following his conscience, attempting to free Jim
from his captivity. Twain’s novel, of course, was pub-
lished after the institution of slavery was abolished,
but it serves as a historical point of reference, as Finn
would have grown up in pre-Civil War America.
Huck Finn’s adult identity is framed within these
racist confines; although African Americans were
free, they still were considered as inferior to whites.
Thus, the socially acceptable and expected thing for
Huck to do would be to turn Jim in to Miss Watson,
and it is the deviation from this expectation that
Huck believes will condemn his soul.
The Huck Finn example also serves as a way to
highlight three additional features of the coming-
of-age narrative. One of these features is the loss
of childhood innocence. In Twain’s novel, although
Huck naïvely misunderstands the consequences of
his decision, his naïveté speaks volumes to readers.coming of age 13