Striving for the Same Goal

It’s funny how somehow, someway; anything in this world can be connected. You can take two things, that seem like they have no relation to each other, and find a way to connect them. In the case of three specific pieces of literature, “The Only Girl at the Boy’s Party” by Sharon Olds, “Rights of Passage” by Sharon Olds, and “A&P” by John Updike, one similar product can be drawn after tearing these stories apart. A common theme, otherwise known as a trope, occurs throughout these stories, even though at first glance they seem nothing alike. Throughout similarities and differences between the three stories, the made product of all the stories is the parallelism of adolescent to adult, or the “growing up process”. After thoroughly analyzing all three pieces of literature, it’s easy to come across the conclusion that all stories portray the same message, just in a different way.

In Sharon Olds’ poem, “The Only Girl at the Boy’s Party, she uses the observing of the growing up process to show the transition from child to adult. Although this girl is still young, there are so many things about the situation that mirror this story to something that adults would experience. Coming from the parent’s perspective, it points out the fact that they are watching their child grow up right before their eyes. Either being surrounded by the opposite sex, or fitting in with a male stereotype at the party, the small girl is out of her normal comfort zone, and although she doesn’t know it, she’s slowly making the transition from girl to young woman. One of the similarities between this poem and the other two pieces of literature is the fact that the main character is “different” or stands out of the crowd. Another similarity between this poem, and especially “A&P” is the fact that it plays with different gender roles. What girls and boys should be viewed as, oppose to what they are viewed as. The extraordinary attention to detail is also similar throughout these three stories. This story is different from the others in the fact that it is only about one character throughout the whole poem, whereas the other literature describes more than one person.

Another great poem by Sharon Olds, “Rights of Passage”, clearly draws the same conclusion as the other pieces of literature. The poem parallels young boys to men. The style switches throughout the poem going from man to child, and vise versa. Olds uses a group of boys at a birthday party, and makes them seem as though they could be a group of men going to war. The descriptions such as Generals and small bankers make the comparison of actions these boys make to those that men make. It shows the growing up process, also from the parent’s point of view. These young boys already have thoughts of those of adults, even though they haven’t even reached their teen years. This poem is similar to “The Only Girl at the Boy’s Party” because it comes from the parent’s perspective. It stands out from the other poems because it doesn’t include both sexes and the indirect comparison of them.

Though this one may not be as obvious, “A&P” takes the product as a boy entering the “real world”. Sammy creates an act of debatable heroism, in a moment of adrenaline and teenage hormones. The result of him quitting his job results in a change in his life, and him realizing what life, as an adult will really be like. The line “…and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter”, is the deal breaker in the fact that this poem is about growing up, and comparing and paralleling life as a youth to that of an adult. The most obvious way that this story is different from the others is, well, it’s a story, not a poem. Sounds dumb? Yes, but that changes a lot in terms of amount of content and style of writing. Also, this story is from the mind of the main character, not a third party observer. Overall though, there are many more similarities between “A&P” with the other two stories than differences.

Through looking at the way youth is paralleled with adulthood, and how the growing up process cause be noticeably viewed, it’s clear that the purpose of all three stories is striving for a similar outcome. Though at first glance these three pieces of literature do not seem to have many similarities, when picked apart and analyzed, it is found that they in fact have more similarities than one would expect. As previously mentioned, the world is very strange in many ways. Whether it is known or not, everything is connected, it just takes some picking apart to realize.